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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



Chap. Copyright No*. 

Shelf. 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



JESUS CHRIST 
BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 





JESUS CHRIST: 


His Person— His Authority— His Work. 


I. 


Jesus Christ before His Ministry. 




Si. 25. 


II. 


Jesus Christ During His Minis- 




try. (In press.) 


III. 


The Death and Resurrection of 




Jesus Christ. [In preparation.) 



JESUS CHRIST 

BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 



BY .» 

EDMOND STAPFER 

II 

PROFESSOR IN THE FACULTY OF PROTESTANT 
THEOLOGY AT PARIS 



Erauslateti bg 
LOUISE SEYMOUR HOUGHTON 



NEW YORK 
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS f j ^v 
1896 






\ 






Copyright, 1896, 
By Charles Scribner's Sons. 



SmbrrsitD }§rrse : 
John Wilson and Son, Cambridge. 



PREFACE 



" JESUS CHRIST : his Person, his Au- 
thority, his Ministry," — such is the 
title of a work which I purpose to write. 
In the first volume, which I now publish, 
I shall endeavor to relate the life of Jesus 
before his ministry. 

Of the time which passed over him until 
his thirtieth year we know only so much 
as the evangelists Matthew and Luke have 
preserved for us. But it is not from the 
facts which they bring to light that I shall 
draw the pages which follow. To their 
touching narratives of the childhood of 
Jesus it seems to me that there is nothing 
to add, and from them nothing to subtract ; 
and the deep poetry which breathes in 
these marvellous stories defies all criticism. 



VI PREFACE 

To touch them is to spoil them. More 
than that, my aim is not to repeat the 
little that we know about the youth of 
Jesus; it is to seek for that which has 
not been told us. 

The early Christians, surprised at the 
sobriety of the gospel narratives, tried to 
make up for the silence of history, and 
composed the apocryphal Gospels of the 
Infancy. I am attempting a study of this 
sort, but I have no intention of writing a 
work of pure imagination, like that of the 
authors of the antique legends. I would 
fain say what must have been the life of 
Jesus until his thirtieth year, by deducing 
from known facts some facts unknown, 
and permitting myself only to observe and 
to relate. 



CONTENTS 



Page 

Preface v 

Introduction ix 

Chapter 

I. The Childhood of Jesus .... 3 

II. Early Beliefs 19 

III. Jesus at Twelve Years of Age 39 

IV. First Impressions and Experiences 57 
V. Studies and Reading 75 

VI. Jesus and the Pharisees ... 93 

VII. Jesus and the Essenes .... 109 

VIII. Jesus and John the Baptist . . 121 
IX. The Messianic Ideal of Jesus at 

Thirty Years of Age .... 137 

X. The Originality of Jesus . . . 161 

Conclusion 175 



INTRODUCTION 



TTOW could Jesus have believed him- 
self and proclaimed himself the 
Messiah ? 

In the first half of the nineteenth cen- 
tury, when historical criticism, with its 
severe and certain methods, addressed it- 
self to the Gospels for the first time, the 
question was answered : Jesus never be- 
lieved himself to be the Messiah. He 
owed his career only to the enthusiasm 
of excited disciples, who, after the death 
of their Master, attributed to him in good 
faith acts which he had not done and 
words which he had not spoken. 

But this solution of the question quickly 
became antiquated. Criticism kept on in 
its work, and forty years of patient and 



X INTRODUCTION 

conscientious labors have compelled the 
impartial historian to refuse this explana- 
tion. It has been demonstrated with the 
most rigorous certainty that Jesus gave 
the most surprising witness that he be- 
lieved himself to be really the Messiah 
expected by his people, and that he 
announced himself as such. 

Next came Renan's explanation. Jesus 
first preached the pure religion of the 
Spirit, — love to God and love to man, the 
reign of charity and happiness by a uni- 
versal brotherhood ; and then, carried 
away by his success, he permitted himself 
to be called Son of David, that is, Mes- 
siah ; and, little by little, by a sort of 
unconscious deceit, and under the do- 
minion of an illusion of which he was 
only in part the dupe, he believed in his 
own Messiahship. He persuaded himself 
that the apocalyptic hopes of his people 
would soon be realized in his own person . 
and he died the victim of this holy and 
religious madness. 



INTRODUCTION xi 

To Renan, Jesus is to be explained in a 
single word, — charm. He thought that 
this word solved the enigma of his life. 
He charmed the multitudes, — his disciples, 
women, the sick, — and he ended by charm- 
ing himself. The pious and gentle Rabbi 
was before all things a charmer, and every- 
thing becomes clear when we see deeply 
into all that this word "charm" includes. 
If he spoke, his words charmed. In the 
early months of the Galilean ministry his 
words were precepts full of gentleness, 
exquisite words that consoled, delight- 
ful parables which enchanted the mul- 
titudes. By charm his cures are to be 
explained, for he incontestably did per- 
form cures. Contact with his person, the 
sound of his voice, his face as well, every- 
thing about him was charming, every- 
thing was of exquisite gentleness and 
suave kindness. 

Then came the evil days. Envy and 
hatred pursued him as they always pursue 
those who succeed and are greatly loved. 



xii INTRODUCTION 

Then Jesus, by a natural reaction, felt his 
confidence in himself increasing. Pene- 
trated as much with the enthusiasm which 
he continued to breathe as with the oppo- 
sition to himself which continually became 
more pronounced, he had the simplicity to 
believe himself the Messiah, and, giving 
himself up to this idea even to martyrdom, 
he was crucified and died. 

But the memory which he left behind 
remained, with its ever-growing charm, — 
for death always magnifies and transfigures. 
Such a memory, the circumstances being 
favorable, must inevitably beget for him 
disciples, give him a Church, conquer the 
world for him. 

The starting-point of the triumphs of 
the invisible Christ was the hallucination 
of Mary Magdalen, one of the women who 
had most loved him. Her devotion was 
such that she believed that she saw him 
again, and insisted that she had seen him. 
Now, at that period a resurrection from 
the dead appeared to be a highly pos- 



IN TR OD UC T10N Xlll 

sible thing. Mary Magdalen's exclama- 
tion, " He is risen from the dead ! " soon 
became every one's word, and the Christian 
Church was founded. 

This explanation — " charm " — is evi- 
dently the only one which may be accepted, 
and is in fact that of those of our contem- 
poraries who are not Christians, — and they 
are legion, — for there is no half-way, the 
dilemma is inexorable ; and Renan, in spite 
of the scientific imperfections of his book, 
has rendered a very great service to sci- 
ence. He has shown that the problem 
that concerns Christ is entirely a psycho- 
logical problem. The question is, to know 
what was taking place in the soul of Jesus. 
He called himself the Messiah. That is 
proved ; it is certain. How did he reach 
that point ? Was he crazy, — yes or no ? 
Such it seems to us is the sole alternative 
which henceforth forces itself between be- 
lievers and unbelievers. The question 
appears to us absolutely clear and precise. 
It can only be solved by a third supposi- 



XIV INTRODUCTION 

tion. Renan has very clearly shown this, 
and herein lies the entire scientific value 
of his work. 

To this question, Was he mad, — yes or 
no ? we shall try to reply, and we shall en- 
deavor to do it purely as a historian. Our 
plan is to observe, to ascertain the facts, 
and to make them known. We shall not 
draw from them the dogmatic consequences 
which they may bear. Our task is simply 
that of the historian. 

Do we, then, hope completely to solve, 
by this purely historic method, the eternal 
question of the Christ? For everybody 
in general, no ; for it is possible to reach 
only partial results, or rather only one 
result, — he was not mad ; a wholly nega- 
tive result, which leads at once to another 
question, What, then, was he ? And this 
second question is unanswerable by the 
historian, because the documents which 
might solve it are wanting. 

This penury of documents will always 
be the cause of a continual return to the 



I NT ROD UCTION XV 

examination of Christ's character. Pure 
science can never exhaust it. To this 
question, What, then, was he ? it is no 
longer for history to reply, for it cannot. 
We enter here upon a moral question. If 
Jesus was not led away by a monstrous 
illusion, he spoke truly ; if he spoke truly, 
he was what he said he was, — the Mes- 
siah, the Saviour of men, the Son of God. 
In this reply, the moral character of the 
historian becomes involved. He is no 
longer on the ground of demonstrated 
facts and historic verifications, but upon 
that of religious faith and personal con- 
viction; and a religious belief cannot be 
scientifically demonstrated. 

The believer says : Jesus will never be 
explained by science, because he is the 
Revelation of God himself, and incompre- 
hensibility is one of the most certain marks 
of his divinity. The pure historian will 
always say: Jesus is not explained by 
science, because the documents are want- 
ing, and we have not sufficient data con- 



XVI IN TR OD UC Tl ON 

cerning him to solve the enigma of his 
appearance by historic methods. But this 
dilemma does not embarrass the believer. 
It is enough for him to know that no 
scientific demonstration is opposed to his 
faith, for he asks not of science to estab- 
lish his faith, to prove it, to show it to be 
true. Faith is not to be demonstrated ; it 
simply affirms itself, simply shows itself 
under pain of ceasing to be faith and be- 
coming what is called sight, — that is, 
either a sensible or an intellectual cer- 
titude. For in questions of faith there 
can be neither sensible nor intellectual 
evidence, but only moral evidence. At 
bottom the believer and the non-believer 
are divided only upon one point. To the 
second, moral evidence does not suffice; 
to the first (and we are of this number) 
it does suffice. 



JESUS CHRIST 

HIS PERSON, HIS AUTHORITY, HIS WORK 



Part jftrgt 

JESUS CHRIST BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 



THE CHILDHOOD OF JESUS 



CHAPTER I 

THE CHILDHOOD OF JESUS 

JESUS was brought up at Nazareth. In 
the middle of the eighth century of 
Rome, about 1890 years ago, 1 this was 
the name 2 of a small town hidden away 
among the hills of Galilee, and making 
part of the Roman province of Syria. It 
was twenty-five leagues north of Jerusa- 
lem, and eight or nine hours' walk from 
Capernaum. 

Its general aspect was dull and mean. 
Nazareth was a cluster of cubical houses 
without character or elegance, built in 
terraces in the hollow of an amphitheatre 
of rocky hills. Irregularly disposed, they 
formed a confused medley of small white 

1 It is impossible to fix the exact date. The first 
ten or twelve years of Jesus' life must have lain be- 
tween the years of Kome 750 and 765. 

2 According to the best manuscripts, the correct 
Greek transliteration of this word is Nazara ; but we 
retain the name Nazareth, consecrated by usage. 



4 JESUS CHRIST 

flat-roofed dwellings, threshing-floors and 
wine-presses. Here were pits hollowed out 
of the ground ; there tombs hewn out of 
the rock. The fig-tree, the olive, the cac- 
tus grew everywhere, and now and then, 
between the houses, a tiny field of wheat. 

The streets were rough and uneven ; and 
the lanes, narrow, crooked, and steep, were 
often crossed by streamlets from the ra- 
vines in the hills north of the town. 

We are told that Nazareth contained 
three or four thousand inhabitants. This 
estimate is certainly excessive. Judging 
by the small area which it covered, Naza- 
reth was a mere village. It is true that in 
the Orient men and beasts can huddle them- 
selves into a very small space; but we 
cannot credit more than fifteen hundred or 
two thousand inhabitants to a village 
which had only one sjmagogue, one foun- 
tain, and one public square. 

The fountain is still there. Springs do 
not change. That of Nazareth is to-day 
what it always was, — the gathering-place 
of the women and young girls, who come 
twice a day to draw the water needed for 
the household. 

Let us imagine ourselves in the first 



BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 5 

century. Here they come, with alert step; 
and among them Mary, the wife of Joseph 
the carpenter, carrying her empty water- 
jar crosswise on her head. She waits for 
her turn, chats with her companions, fills 
her pitcher, and goes away, with the grace- 
ful, flexible step which is that of all the 
women of her country. Her dress consists 
of wide trousers which leave bare the lower 
part of the leg, and a robe with open sleeves 
which leave her arms also exposed. A few 
coins gleam among the braids of her hair. 
When Jesus, her eldest son, has grown a 
little older, he will come with his mother 
and will help her to fill and carry her 
pitcher. Later he will come alone, to 
spare Mary all fatigue ; and, to quote from 
the simple-hearted chronicler of 1187 : Au 
missel de cele fontaine lavait Nostre Dame 
les drapels de coi ele envelopet Nostre Sei- 
gneur. De cele fontaine envoiait querre Nos- 
tre Dame par Nostre Seigneur, quant il fut 
un peu grant, et il y aloit volontiers. 1 

1 "At the stream from this fountain Our Lady 
washed the linen in which she wrapped Our Lord. 
To this fountain Our Lady sent Our Lord to bring 
water, when he was a little grown ; and he went will- 
ingly/' — La Citez de Jerusalem. 



6 JESUS CHRIST 

Mary returns home. Her house is low 
and square, with a court before it and a 
terrace on the roof. Let us enter. We 
are in a large room without windows, and 
filled with all sorts of utensils. The door 
is wide, and by day is always open, and 
the brilliant light of the Orient enters in 
floods. There are no tables, but there are 
rugs, and on the walls are hung a few 
garments, robes and veils. 

The dwelling is narrow, and the family 
numerous. Joseph and Mary have at 
least seven children. There are, to begin 
with, five sons: the eldest bears the name 
Jehoshua, and the others are Yakob, 
Joseph, Youda, Shimeon, — that is, Jesus, 
James, Joseph, Jude, and Simon. As to 
the daughters we know neither their 
names nor their number; but Joseph and 
Mary have at least Wo. 1 These nine 
people, perhaps more, all live in the one 
room of this house ; and this room serves 
for all purposes. 2 Here Joseph works at 
his carpenter's trade; here all the family 

1 " His sisters." Mark vi. 3. 

2 "The one room." This was the usual condition; 
but it is very possible that Joseph and Mary had a 
house of two or three rooms. 



BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 7 

sleep; they all take their meals here, and 
here also Mary does the cooking. 

The walls of this poor dwelling are not 
of stone, not even of brick. They are 
made of sun-dried clay. An outer stair- 
case gives access to the roof, which forms 
a terrace, the floor of which, a mixture of 
chalk and sand with small pebbles and 
ashes, has become a sort of hardened soil 
which shows here and there a sparse vege- 
tation. In summer, on fine starlight 
nights, all the family sleep here, each one 
rolled in his blanket, for the heat of the 
common room is insupportable, and the 
swarming insects make it almost intoler- 
able to stay there. 

An inventory of Joseph's household 
goods would show, first of all, a carpenter's 
bench like our own, and its tools; a 
kitchen furnace with two places, a sheet 
of iron for roasting wheat or baking bread ; 
a few leathern bottles, some wooden bowls, 
one or two earthen pitchers, some goblets 
and cups; and that is all. Joseph and 
Mary have no plates, no forks or spoons. 
The beds are mere pallets, rolled up 
every morning and placed upon an ele- 
vated plank running along the walls. A 



5 JESUS CHSIST 

few mats and cushions upon which people 
squat after the oriental fashion, and a 
great chest, complete the furniture. Dur- 
ing the warm season this chest holds the 
rugs and blankets. Besides these articles 
Joseph and Mary possess a lamp, a bushel, 
a broom, and a mill. The lamp is very 
tall, and stands on the floor. It is made of 
clay, has two or three wicks, and burns 
oiL The bushel serves as a measure, a 
drawer, and a bag. Turned bottom up- 
ward on the floor, it takes the place of the 
table which is not there. Sometimes they 
place the lamp upon it when they wish to 
raise the light and iUuminate the whole 
Boom. 

As for the mill, it is for hand use ; and 
every morning Mary, with the help of one 
of her daughters, must turn the crank and 
grind the grain needed for the day's 
bread. 

It is noon, the hour of the principal 
meal. Before sitting down to table, the 
whole family wash their hands. This 
ablution has a religious character, and it 
would be more exact to say they purify 
their hands. At a later day Jesus will 
declare these purifications useless, and will 



BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 9 

no longer practise them ; but he is now a 
child : he submits to the regulations of his 
pious parents, which are those of the Law 
of his people. 

Before squatting down in oriental 
fashion, Joseph gives thanks, and Jesus, 
the eldest child, repeats a part of his 
prayer. At the close of the meal another 
thanksgiving will be pronounced. 

Each one has a loaf before him. It is 
a sort of flat round cake which serves also 
as plate, and on which each puts his 
portion of butter or of cheese. Further- 
more, there is a dish on the bottom of the 
upturned bushel; and each one at table, 
after having broken his bread, dips his 
morsel in the dish before eating. 

What is there in this dish? Usually 
curdled milk or a porridge made of barley 
or wheat. In addition to butter and 
cheese there are also eggs, honey, and 
parched grain. These form the ordinary 
food of the carpenter's family. Meat is 
scarce and dear. If any is bought on 
feast days, it is beef, mutton, or kid. In 
summer a few grapes and figs complete the 
dinner. Sometimes, in the season, there 
are locusts. If so, the children must have 



10 JESUS CHRIST 

gathered them. They are prepared by- 
reducing the body to a powder, which is 
mingled with flour to make a sort of cake, 
very much appreciated. 

In the goblet, which is passed around 
the circle, each one drinking in turn, 
there is sometimes water mingled with 
wine ; but the ordinary drink of the family 
is a sort of small beer made of wheat and 
fruits, and called shechar. 

The meal ended, each resumes his work 
until evening, when another meal, even 
more frugal than the earlier one, again 
brings the family together. 

They were poor in the house of the 
Nazareth carpenter, but they did not suffer 
from poverty,, for among Jews of that 
time the word " poverty " was never synony- 
mous with "indigence" or "want." The 
requirements of life were very few, and 
needs created by modern civilization were 
unknown. Such conveniences as we are 
accustomed to did not exist, and Joseph, 
Mary, and their children suffered no priva- 
tion. Things which we could with diffi- 
culty do without, comforts which have 
become necessary to us, were not in the 
least missed by the carpenter and his 



BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 11 

family, for they knew nothing about them 
and felt no need of them. 

What were the first religious notions 
received by the child Jesus ? Very early 
he knew by heart certain verses of the 
Bible. As soon as he began to speak, his 
mother made a point of repeating to him 
verses of the Law; and first of all she 
taught him those which proclaim the unity 
of God and the election of Israel : " Hear, 
O Israel, the Lord thy God is One Lord. 
Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all 
thy heart and with all thy soul and with all 
thy might." 1 "The Lord did not set his 
love upon you nor choose you because 
ye were more in number than any people, 
for ye were the fewest of all peoples ; but 
because the Lord loveth you." 2 When the 
child could repeat these two verses per- 
fectly, his mother taught him others. 
After a while she put into his hands strips 
of parchment upon which were written 
the words which he knew by heart. Thus 
he finally came to know his letters, and, 
repeating these verses often with his little 
playmates, he soon learned to read. 

1 Deut. vi. 4, 5. 

2 Deut. vii. 7. 



12 JESUS CHRIST 

The day came when his mother explained 
to him the meaning of the words he was 
repeating. She told him of God and of 
the creation. She related to him the 
glorious history of the past, — Abraham 
willing to offer up Isaac; Jacob and the 
ladder of light; Moses and the burning 
bush; the coming up out of Egypt and 
the passage of the Red Sea; David and 
his victories; Judas Maccabseus and the 
triumph of national independence. Jesus 
early knew all these marvellous stories of 
the Old Testament. The commandments 
of Jehovah, his promises, his warnings, 
were graven on his mind in ineffaceable 
characters. 

His family was assuredly very pious, 
adhering closely to the strictest Judaism, 
for every year his father and mother made 
part of the little caravan of Nazarenes who 
went up to Jerusalem to celebrate the 
Passover; and James, the next younger 
brother of Jesus, remained in manhood, 
even after his conversion to Christianity, a 
rigid and austere Jew, practising a narrow 
and minute piety, careful to omit no rite and 
to observe all the purifications. Without 
question this was due to impressions re- 



BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 13 

ceived in infancy in a home which was very 
orthodox and closely bound up in the 
national hopes. The piety of Jesus was 
no doubt of another character; and there- 
fore it early began to distress his mother 
and brothers. The day was to come when 
they would try to hold him back, to keep 
him with them ; would even go so far as to 
suspect him of insanity. From all this we 
may conclude with certainty that the most 
scrupulous attachment to pharisaical ob- 
servances, and an entire submission to all 
the prescriptions of the Law, were the 
fixed rule of daily life in the carpenter's 
house. 

When Jesus was six years old, his parents 
sent him to school. That of Nazareth 
was held in the synagogue, the audience- 
room serving for schoolroom during the 
week. 1 The schoolmaster was the per- 
sonage who had charge of the building and 
of the manuscripts of the Sacred Books, 
and watched over the orderly conduct of 
the service on the Sabbath days. 

1 This was the custom in the villages. In cities 
and large towns (and perhaps Nazareth was of this 
number) the school probably occupied a building 
contiguous to the synagogue. 



14 JESUS CHRIST 

Jesus attended this school until he was 
ten or twelve years old. At this age he 
knew how to read, write, and calculate. 
He then became a "Son of the Com- 
mandment; " that is, he began to be sub- 
ject to the discipline of the Law. Every 
morning and evening he must recite the 
Shema, 1 a few verses of which he had 
known since infancy; for every morning 
and night, over the whole extent of Pales- 
tinian territory, the Jews hastily muttered 
these verses as one tells one's beads. 
Jesus never approved of these " vain repe- 
titions." The day came when he formally 
condemned them. But at twelve years of 
age he recited the Shema like every one 
else; and these nineteen verses certainly 
became the subject of his first religious 
reflections. 

To this must be added what he learned 
on Saturdays (the Sabbath) at a synagogue 
service designed especially for children. 
It was a sort of catechizing to which Mary 
had been especially advised to send him 
regularly. Therefore, next to his mother, 

1 The Shema contains nineteen verses, Deut. vi. 4-9 ; 
xi. 13-21 ; Num. xv. 37-41. The name comes from the 
first word, Shema, which means Hear. 



BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 15 

it was the schoolmaster who first initiated 
him in the reading of the Old Testament. 

Thus passed the early years of Jesus. 
What impressions must have been made 
upon his soul by his home, his parents, his 
brothers and sisters, the family life in 
which he had been so happy ! How often 
he must have recalled them to mind at a 
later time : the paternal home, the " father 
who gave good things to his children," 1 
the little village boys with whom he had 
played at marriages and burials, when he 
amused himself with them in imitating 
the village wedding-dances or in uttering 
the lamentations of the hired mourners 
who attended funeral services, — what 
sweet and peaceful memories of the time 
when he had only to let himself be loved ! 

Such was the placid and humble child- 
hood of him who holds the first place in 
the history of humanity, and who has exer- 
cised a decisive influence upon the destinies 
of the world ; of him whose work is, without 
contradiction, the most remarkable which 
the annals of the past have bequeathed to 
our meditation ; and whose life divides the 
history of our race into two parts which 
nothing can ever blend together. 
1 Matt. vii. 11. 



II 

EARLY BELIEFS 



CHAPTER II 

EARLY BELIEFS 

HPHE child believes upon authority; he 
accepts all that his teachers tell 
him. He is surprised at nothing, and 
never dreams of raising a doubt concern- 
ing such affirmations as are given him as 
indisputable truths. At a later time he 
examines his early beliefs; perhaps he 
abandons them, and if he keeps them it 
is as changed into deliberate personal con- 
victions; but he must have begun with 
unquestioning submission, and if he was 
brought up by believing parents he ac- 
cepted all their religious teachings, and 
clung to them in all good faith. 

This was certainly the case with Jesus. 
Brought up in a pious family, he believed 
what every young Israelite of that time 
believed. The faith of his childhood, 
simple, artless, confident, was that of 
Joseph and Mary, that of the pious circles 



20 JESUS CHRIST 

of Galilee at that time. It is made known 
to us by the Jewish books of that epoch, 
and by some of the representative char- 
acters whose memory has been preserved 
to us. 

We can know then with sufficient accu- 
racy what Jesus believed in his child- 
hood, and what were the beliefs which he 
received on authority and for which he 
was not in the slightest degree respon- 
sible. 

What did Joseph and Mary teach their 
son when he began to grow up and under- 
stand things ? 

The two eldest, Jesus and James, must 
have received the same religious educa- 
tion; and that which later James became 
and remained until the end of his life may 
show us what that education was, for his 
nature was essentially conservative. We 
have said that even after becoming a Chris- 
tian he retained an ineffaceable stamp of 
Judaism. In many respects he remained 
what he had always been. All his life 
James energetically defended the Jewish 
law and privileges. He was very faithful to 
the temple and the synagogue; he never 
ceased to expect the glorious Messiah of the 



BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 21 

Pharisees, and was in his own person an 
ascetic, half Ebionite, half Essene. Legend 
adds to these authentic characteristics the 
statements that he was holy before his 
birth; that he never drank wine nor fer- 
mented liquor, never shaved his head nor 
anointed himself with oil; and that he 
passed his time always on his knees in 
prayer, — a fancy picture, a few lines of 
which may be historic ; nor is it assuming 
too much to draw from it the conclusion 
at which we have already arrived, that the 
family of the carpenter of Nazareth was in 
all probability one of profound and ardent 
piety. 

But can we create anew the atmosphere 
of this family life in which Jesus lived, at 
that age when one accepts everything and 
recoils from nothing? Can we say what 
was the current of ideas and facts, of 
beliefs and practices, in which James per- 
mitted himself to be carried along, and 
against which Jesus was one day to 
struggle ? 

Two facts govern here, — the expectation 
of a glorious Messiah, and the doctrine 
that the fulfilling of the Law justified man 
before God. Joseph and Mary taught 



2-2 JESUS CHRIST 

Jesus that he must be very scrupulous in 
the practice of the rites, and very faithful 
in looking for "the Consolation of Israel." 

Now, these two beliefs were precisely 
those upon which Jesus at a later time 
struck out new and entirely original ideas, 
— ideas which became the very ground 
of the opposition which he aroused and 
its reason for being. 

Underlying these beliefs, if one may so 
speak, in the very depths of the child's 
soul, there was a primitive religious teach- 
ing, common to all Jews of his time with- 
out exception, which Mary must have 
given to her son somewhat on this wise. 
She taught him, first of all, to believe in a 
single God who is the only true God, 
creator of heaven and earth; who chose 
the people Israel to be his own preferred 
people, and who would one day — a day 
not far off — give Israel the supremacy 
over all nations. These were certainly 
the first religious notions which the child 
received. 

That his people were the chosen people 
there was no room to doubt, for there was 
a book which said so, — the Torah, dictated 
by God to Moses from the first word to 



BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 23 

the last. More than that, Jerusalem 
was the centre of the world, and all 
other countries surrounded Palestine, 
which showed that Palestine was the 
u Holy Land," and that the Jews were 
destined to rule over all peoples. 

The earth was a very large flat disk, 
around which revolved the sun, the moon, 
and the stars, and God was up above the 
sky; that is, in heaven, beyond the blue 
surface which we see over our heads. 
From thence he ruled the world and its 
inhabitants. 

The child learned also that the world was 
in two parts, — the land of Israel and that 
which was not the land of Israel. Men 
were divided into two classes, — Jews and 
Gentiles; that is, those who are "within " 
and those who are "without." Beyond 
the land occupied by the Gentiles, the 
child was told, lay the sea, whose vast 
extent no one knew. 

In heaven were all the righteous people 
who had hitherto lived. Abraham was 
the highest of them all. An everlasting 
feast was carried on, and the best people 
were at the table, "lying in Abraham's 
bosom." 



24 JESUS CHRIST 

Besides this, in heaven was the throne 
of God, surrounded by hundreds of legions 
of angels, each in his own rank. The high- 
est, those who were nearest the Almighty, 
were the archangels. All of them sang 
the praises of God. Some of them were 
also his messengers to man; for God, who 
dwelt in light inaccessible, could enter 
into relations with a sinful world only by 
means of intermediaries. Now and again 
men saw angels, who appeared to them 
sometimes in dreams, sometimes when 
they were awake. They watched over and 
protected good people, and carried their 
prayers to the throne of God, and were 
therefore true guardian angels. Every 
one had his own, who made known to 
God the dangers which threatened him 
over whom he was watching, and im- 
plored for him divine aid. When a good 
man died, angels came and carried him 
to heaven. If his piety had been great, 
he was laid in the very bosom of Abraham, 
and shared with him the everlasting feast. 
There were angels who remained always 
in heaven to contemplate the glory of 
God or pray for men. Angels had played 
an important part in the history of the 



BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 25 

chosen people. It was they who built the 
ark and gave the Law to Moses, and it was 
they who always guarded the Temple 
treasure. More than that, every natural 
force had its angel, — the rain, the dew, 
the wind, the fog, the hail, the fire, etc. 
Every one was sure of all this. Only the 
Sadducees did not believe in angels. 

There was also another invisible world, 
called the Kingdom of Darkness, or King- 
dom of Satan. This was the name of its 
prince, who ruled with the permission of 
God. This Satan, who was also called 
Asmodeus, Belial, Beelzebub, Devil, was 
a very real and living personage, who 
tormented men and led them into evil. 
He had innumerable hosts of demons 
under his orders, invisible and maleficent 
spirits, by whom people were constantly 
surrounded. For this reason the de- 
mons were sometimes called "the pow- 
ers of the air." They usually wandered 
in deserts and uninhabited places, espe- 
cially such as were arid. 

These demons were the cause of nearly 
all disease. They also made men fall into 
sin. And indeed there was a very close 
relation between moral evil and physical 



26 JESUS CHRIST 

evil. It sometimes happened that a demon, 
or even the chief of demons, Satan, took 
entire possession of a person, body and 
soul. The wretched man might even be 
the pre}^ of several demons at the same 
time. It was always possible to expel 
them. God had given to pious men, 
especially to Doctors and Rabbis, the power 
to cast out demons. They alone knew 
how to heal; and for this they had 
their well-defined procedure, — laying on 
of hands, prayers, fasts, etc. Each one 
had his own, and for this reason the Rabbis 
were to be held in the greatest respect. 

These healings were called "signs;" 
that is, marks of the presence of a supe- 
rior power which was beneficent, or rather 
of the one superior beneficent power, that 
of God. There were also "signs" which 
were the tokens of the presence of a supe- 
rior evil-working power, or rather of the 
one superior evil-working power, that of 
the Devil. 

These divers potencies, these invisible 
"powers," unceasingly made their presence 
known, and therefore nothing extraordi- 
nary, unfamiliar, extravagant, was impos- 
sible. Many had seen these signs, these 



BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 27 

miracles, and everybody desired to see 
them. " The Jews ask for signs ; " 1 and 
Joseph and Mary, like every one else, cer- 
tainly believed in the supernatural under 
the strangest forms, — for example, inspirits 
which had never had bodies, or in angels 
of fire, of water and of wind, that is, in an 
invisible world which in all places and at 
all times made known its presence and its 
activities. 

It is difficult for us at this day to picture 
to ourselves the exact state of mind which 
holds beliefs of this kind. If, for example, 
we are told of a sudden cure taking place 
in our own time, however surprising it 
may be, we always explain it by the action 
of natural forces, known or unknown. It 
is nature which has acted; this we do not 
for an instant doubt. If any one told us 
that a resurrection from the dead had 
taken place among our contemporaries, 
even if we had seen it ourselves, we should 
immediately explain it either by a lethargic 
slumber or in some other way; but even 
if we could not explain it, we should not 
for a moment admit that a true resurrection 
had taken place in our own time, — that is 

1 1 Cor. i. 22. 



•28 JESUS CHRIST 

to say, that life had returned to a body 
actually dead. In short, at the present 
day we always, without hesitation, seek 
for a natural explanation of everything 
that seems to be a miracle ; and if we do 
not find such an explanation, we do not 
affirm with any less certainty that it does 
exist. 

In the time when Jesus was growing up 
it was entirely the other way. Though 
one might not at once admit, and find it 
perfectly easy to admit, the most surprising 
miracle, — the resurrection of a dead per- 
son, for example, — asking for proofs of 
the fact, at least no one was very exacting 
as to the proof, for there was nothing im- 
possible in the prodigy itself. Everything 
was possible, absolutely everything, no mat- 
ter what. In our day we declare every- 
thing that is out of the natural order of 
things to be a priori impossible. Perhaps 
we are wrong; perhaps we are too much 
carried away with the notion of the immu- 
tability of natural laws, and it is highly 
possible that the future may bring a cor- 
rective to the inflexible rigor with which 
we reject all that does not appear to us to 
be conformable to the known order of the 



BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 29 

universe. But for the time, thus it is; 
and therefore we find some difficulty in 
representing to ourselves the effect which 
a miracle had upon the mind of an inhabi- 
tant of Palestine in the first century. The 
science of medicine did not exist. Empiri- 
cal remedies were the only ones employed, 
and every one had his own. Resurrection 
from the dead was held to be a perfectly 
possible and even a very probable thing. 

The firm persuasion of the speedy 
appearance of the Messiah belonged to this 
order of supernatural beliefs. Without 
the slightest doubt the parents of Jesus 
had told their son that there would be in 
the very near future a sudden revolution 
which would be marked by the appearance 
of a Deliverer. The present was a time 
of great calamity. The nation was in 
humiliation, and under the Roman yoke 
the people felt severely the loss of that 
liberty which the Maccabees had formerly 
conquered for them. 

The great events of that glorious epoch 
were certainly often related to the child 
Jesus, and contrasted with the present sad 
condition. Nothing more was to be ex- 
pected of man, but everj^thmg might be 



30 JESTS CHRIST 

expected of God. They were living in 
the last times: and the words Ma ran 
atha, 1 which Paul has preserved in their 
original form, must often have been 
sounded in the child's ears. 

What if the Messiah is already born? 
they would say. For he is to remain 
hidden until the day of his manifestation. 
However, there will be signs at the last 
moment. Elias will first appear: then 
will come the Messiah, who will be only 
a man. but a superior man. an ideal being, 
the Anointed of the Lord, the King of 
Israel. He will be a prophet, and will 
commit no sin. His days will be days of 
consolation. While awaiting him, we must 
lead a pious and austere life, with strict 
attention to the Pharisaic observances. 

When the world to come should begin, 
the good would have a new body, and the 
wicked would be eternally punished. Jeru- 
salem, which would have become the capi- 
tal of the world, would be all of gold, 
cypress, and cedar. A perpetual Sabbath 
would be celebrated in the Temple, and the 
kings of the earth would prostrate them- 
selves before the Jews. 

1 " The Lord is at hand." 1 Cor. xri. 22. 



BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 31 

This era of prosperity would be estab- 
lished only after a series of terrible woes, 
which would form the transition between 
"the present age " and "the age to come." 
For this reason the humble folk, the vil- 
lagers, looked forward with great fear to 
the coming of the Messianic era. The 
fiery-tongued Pharisaic preachers used to 
come and tell them of frightful calamities, 
the conflict between Gog and Magog, 
famines, wars, earthquakes. "But," they 
would add, and these words brought com- 
fort again to the suffering and the poor, 
"after that, righteousness will reign. 
God, who has laid the burden of life upon 
the lowly, cannot have done it without 
intending to make compensation." Let 
them observe the Law and the traditions ; 
they would thus acquire merits which 
would confer upon them rights before 
God, and then the last should be first. 
And the humble folk would resume their 
tasks with patience after this glimpse of 
future triumph, this vision of the eternal 
Jerusalem. 1 

1 Here we simply set forth the current ideas of the 
populace concerning the expected Messiah. Farther 
on, in the chapter entitled " Studies and Reading," we 



32 JESUS CHRIST 

To learn to obey the Law one must 
study it. But the Law was not the only 
divine book. All the writings bequeathed 
by the past were such; and one should 
read the history of the nation, and meditate 
upon the prophecies in the volume entitled 
"The Prophets." There were, besides, 
other books very important for those to 
read who wish to be informed concern- 
ing "that which is soon to come to pass." 
Finally, the traditions of the fathers were 
themselves divinely inspired. But the 
Law was before all the others. To expect 
the Messiah and practise the Law, — here 
in two words was the whole duty of the 
believing Jew. 

The practice of the Law was essential 
to justification before God. The moral 

shall give a fuller account of the Messianic ideas of 
the Jews of that period, according to their sacred 
books, and we shall again return to the subject in the 
chapter entitled "The Messianic Ideal of Jesus at 
Thirty Years of Age/' These distinctions are essen- 
tial to the understanding of the development of Jesus' 
ideas on this important subject; for there was in his 
experience, first, his childish beliefs, the artless notions 
prevalent among the people ; second, what his own 
reading taught him ; and finally, the notions which he 
received at thirty years of age, when he became con- 
vinced that he was himself the expected Messiah. 



BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 33 

life inhered solely in legal prescriptions. 
To love one's neighbor was no doubt 
important; but it was precisely as impor- 
tant to give the tithe of one's harvest, to 
abstain from eating pork, and not take 
more than the permitted number of steps 
on the Sabbath day. 

It is easy to understand that Jesus 
must from the first have felt the need of 
recoil from this position ; and the breath of 
resistance with which from the first day 
his teachings were inspired had perhaps its 
origin in the narrow and petty character of 
the prescriptions to which he had sub- 
mitted in his early home, and to which his 
brother James gave himself with the most 
rigorous obedience. For in his parents' 
house Jesus must above all things have 
learned to perform the rites, to recite the 
Shema, not to omit a single purification, 
to have the sacred fringes on his mantle 
and the phylacteries on his arms. It is 
extremely probable that Joseph and Mary 
submitted, though certainly with true 
piety and profoundly religious feeling, to 
all the minutiae of Pharisaic devotion. 
The Pharisees had regulated everything, 
and every one knew what was his duty in 

3 



34 J£SUS CHRIST 

the matter of walking, standing still, 
working, resting, eating, sleeping, jour- 
neying. 

We picture to ourselves Joseph and 
Mary as two simple-hearted, trustful 
Galileans, doing everything that the 
Scribes ordained because they sincerely 
believed that God himself had thus 
ordained. They inculcated in their chil- 
dren a respect for religious belief and 
practice, the regular and assiduous accom- 
plishment of ritual duty, and submission in 
all which went beyond that. They believed 
without discussing and without under- 
standing, waiting in faith for him who 
would " exalt the humble and cast down 
the proud. " They belonged to the humble ; 
they had been taught that poverty was a 
merit, that the lower classes alone were 
true patriots, that wealth was a sin, and 
that the rich were impious because they 
were rich. 

Such was the strange mixture of truth 
and error with which the soul of the child 
Jesus was first imbued. 

Did he at once reject the error by that 
profound and unerring intuition which he 
had all his life? We do not doubt it for 



BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 35 

a moment. If he submitted to the rites 
and observed them as he ought to have 
done at the age when a child should sub- 
mit, he was, first of all, obeying his God, 
that Father whose " things " always occu- 
pied him ; and the disquietude into which 
his conduct in the Temple was one day to 
plunge the minds of his parents was cer- 
tainly only one incident in the disquietude 
which from that day forward he was often 
to cause them by the independence of 
mind which he early showed in the face of 
manifest error. No doubt he believed in 
angels and demons. He believed that the 
Law was dictated by God, and he at first 
believed that the Messiah would reign on 
earth; but he never admitted that the 
performance of rites makes man right with 
God, and that legal purifications can take 
the place of conversion. 

The religious instruction which was 
imposed upon him by authority awakened 
in his soul a great desire, an imperative 
need, to think things out for himself, to 
form his own convictions; in a word, to 
study by every means which God might 
put within his reach, and to occupy him- 
self with "the things of his Father," while 



36 JESUS CHRIST 

still remaining an obedient and respectful 
son. For he felt something within him- 
self which transcended and dominated all 
this religion of his parents, something 
which protested, which understood what 
they did not understand. He felt him- 
self to be superior to them. What was 
about to take place in the soul of this 
child? 



Ill 

JESUS AT TWELVE YEARS 
OF AGE 



CHAPTER III 

JESUS AT TWELVE YEARS OF A&E 

'T V HE man who does a great work and 
strongly influences his time is always 
aided by circumstances. He is often 
indeed, as it were, created by them. 
Genius, however great, does not suffice to 
him who initiates a movement ; it is also 
necessary that the moment when genius 
can put forth its full powers shall be pre- 
cisely the moment in which he lives. 
Luther, born a hundred years earlier, 
would not have made the Reformation, 
and Napoleon was served by events even 
more than by his own genius. 

Jesus was not an exception to this com- 
mon law. When he was born, the time, 
to use the picturesque expression of the 
Gospel, "was fulfilled." Judaism had 
completed its religious evolution, and 
Paganism had reached the limit of its 
speculations and experiments. What the 



40 JESUS CHRIST 

first century needed was a great social and 
religious renovation. 

It was inaugurated by him whose youth 
we are trying to describe ; and among the 
number of the events which taught him, 
enlightened him, hastened the efflorescence 
of his religious consciousness, we must 
place in the front rank the scene that St. 
Luke has preserved to us, which took 
place when the child was twelve years 
old. 

Every year Joseph and Mary made the 
journey to the Holy City for the Feast of 
the Passover, joining the little group of 
pious folk of Nazareth who held to the 
strict accomplishment of the Law. To 
take Jesus with them as soon as he was 
twelve years old was considered by his 
parents an imperative duty. The child 
had certainly been prepared by his mother 
for the coming of this great day. To 
leave home ; to see Jerusalem and the Tem- 
ple; to be initiated into the sacred rite of 
the Paschal Lamb, for which his parents 
had such great respect, and for which they 
made such sacrifices, — how often had he 
not looked forward to it ! 

The route which the little caravan took 



BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 41 

was from this time forth traversed by 
Jesus every year. Besides the Feast of 
the Passover, that of Tabernacles and still 
others must have drawn him to Jerusalem ; 
and therefore it comes to pass that this 
road, which still exists, is of all the roads 
of Palestine that which Jesus most often 
traversed. 

On quitting Nazareth the little band of 
worshippers turned their steps toward the 
Jordan valley, for they must not pass 
through Samaria. They therefore went 
toward the southeast, and after having 
crossed the great caravan route between 
Egypt and Damascus, they passed Shunem, 
the home of Elisha's Shunamite 1 and 
Jezreel, 2 crossing the valley of that name. 
From Jezreel the travellers went to Beth- 
shan, also called Scythopolis. 3 This was 
the first stage. 

Nine hours of walking lay between them 
and Nazareth; the Jordan valley opened 
before them. Here they halted, set up 
their tents, and passed the night. Scytho- 
polis was a great fortified town, filled with 

i 1 Kings iv. 8-37. 

2 Now Zerin. 

3 Now Beisan. 



4 '2 JESUS CHRIST 

heathen buildings, temples, theatres, places 
of amusement. It overlooked the river 
from an eminence of a hundred metres. 

On the morrow the pilgrims, who had 
been most careful not to enter the city so 
as not to incur uncleanness by contact 
with heathen, resumed their march, fol- 
lowing the valley, which was covered with 
rich pasturage and crossed by many brooks. 
They passed Succoth 1 and Archelais, 2 an 
entirely new city lately built by Archelaus, 
Herod's son. 

This second stage was of about twelve 
hours. Again the caravan camped in the 
fields to avoid entering a heathen town. 
On the third day, in about four hours, 
they reached Phasaelis, also a new town, 
for it had been founded by Herod the 
Great in honor of his son Phasael. In four 
hours more they were in Jericho. 

From Jericho to Jerusalem was only a 
six hours' journey, and this had to be left 
for the fourth and last day. This final stage 
of the journey was rendered extremely 
difficult by the stifling heat, due to the 
depression of the Jordan valley. For the 

1 Now Sqout, 

2 Now Kerbet-Makherut. 



BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 43 

valley is in fact shut in between two 
ranges of hills, and the temperature some- 
times becomes intolerable. It is true that 
it was now springtime, about Easter, and 
precisely the season when the journey 
could be made under the least unfavorable 
circumstances. 

Let us add that the road was not safe. 
From Jerusalem to Jericho and all along 
the Jordan valley attacks of robbers were 
frequent, and the men of the Nazareth 
party were certainly all armed. By day, 
when the travellers had nothing to fear, 
they sang the Pilgrim Psalms, 1 and we 
can picture to ourselves Jesus, at the even- 
ing halt, helping Joseph to set up the 
tent, while Mary prepared supper, and all, 
before retiring, reciting Psalm cxxi., which 
was the hymn for the close of day, — 

I will lift up mine eyes to the hills, 
From whence cometh my help. 
My help cometh from the Lord, 
Who made heaven and earth. 
He will not permit thy foot to stumble : 
He who keepeth thee will not slumber. 
Behold, He will not slumber nor sleep 
Who guardeth Israel. 

1 Psalms cxx.-cxxxiv. 



44 JESUS CHRIST 

The Lord is thy keeper : 

The Lord is thy shade on thy right hand. 

The sun shall not smite thee by day, 

Nor the moon by night. 

The Lord shall preserve thee from all evil : 

He will preserve thy soul. 

The Lord shall preserve thy going out and 

thy coming in 
From this time forth and for evermore. 

Jericho, the city of palm-trees, was a 
charming city, the first in which our 
pilgrims could take a little rest, for it was 
the only one not infested with Gentiles. 
The whole surrounding country was cov- 
ered with palm groves mingled with 
gardens and cultivated fields. 

Between Jericho and Jerusalem they 
first crossed a wide, arid, stony plain, 
somewhat like a desert. Then the road 
ascended rapidly, and forced its way be- 
tween two almost vertical walls of gigantic 
rocks. The road, the remains of which still 
exist and are easy to follow, continued to 
ascend, and becoming steeper and steeper 
was at times nothing less than a veritable 
staircase hewn out of the rock. All around 
were bare and fissured heights. From 
time to time, in a yawning gulf far below, 



BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 45 

was seen the torrent of Kidron, silvery as 
a thread of foam. 

After this toilsome march by wild and 
steep paths which justify the expression 
"go up to Jerusalem," they arrived at 
Bethany, one of the villages best loved by 
Jesus, and the acquaintance of which he 
made now for the first time. 

Jerusalem was near at hand; but it 
could not yet be seen, being hidden by 
the Mount of Olives. Just this hill to 
climb, and within ten minutes after leav- 
ing Bethany, suddenly the plain unrolled, 
revealing the splendid panorama of the city 
crowned by its gigantic Temple. 

They from Nazareth stood still and 
gazed. There, first of all, was the height of 
Mount Zion ; next that of Moriah, crowned 
with the walls which encircle the sanctu- 
ary. The majestic scene was new to Jesus. 
The city seemed like an almost impreg- 
nable place. A thick and high wall, fur- 
nished with sixty towers, completely 
surrounded it. Within the enclosure 
appeared a mass of flat-roofed buildings 
closely huddled together. It was like a 
multitude of small cubes of white stone 
standing out against the blue sky, at 



46 JESUS CHRIST 

unequal altitudes, for the city is built 
upon hills. 

The panorama which the child Jesus had 
before Ms eyes was the very one which he 
to have on Palm Sunday, five days 
before his death: and he was standing on 
the spot where he would then weep over 
the city and its peoj)le. Did he think on 
that Palm Sunday of his childish impres- 
sions, and of that other day which also 
preceded by a very little the Paschal Feast, 
when, twenty-one years before, this sacred 
place had appeared before him for the first 
time? At last he was looking upon the 
Temple, which he had so often pictured to 
himself, with its golden roof sparkling in 
the sunlight! 

But they must keep on to the end of 
their journey. The path descended ob- 
liquely. They went through the valley of 
Gethsemane, crossed the Kidron. and five 
minutes later entered the city by the 
Sheep Gate, the very gate by which Jesus 
was to go out on that Thursday night 
which was the last before his death. They 
were all singing the One Hundred and 
Twenty-second Psalm. " Our feet shall 
stand within thy gates. O Jerusalem!" 



BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 47 

These poor folk from Nazareth must 
have very much resembled the pilgrims of 
the present day who come from the heart 
of Russia or elsewhere to kneel in the Holy 
Sepulchre, whose simple and ardent piety 
provokes smiles among those who are 
surfeited with the emotions of the Holy 
Places. Their devotion certainly repro- 
duces in its essential features that of the 
Galileans of the early time. 

The latter did not lodge in the town, for 
the number of its inhabitants, which in 
general was from sixty to eighty thousand, 
was increased at feast-times to unheard-of, 
incredible proportions. They were there- 
fore obliged to camp outside upon the 
Mount of Olives. 

The garden of "the Oil-press," where 
Jesus was arrested, belonged to a friend, 
who had there a farmstead serving as coun- 
try-house. Who knows whether the habit 
which he formed later of always passing 
the night outside of the city, upon the 
Mount of Olives, did not date from his 
childhood, springing from time-honored 
relations of his family with some inhabi- 
tant of this place? 

However this may have been, Joseph, 



48 JESUS CHRIST 

Mary, and the child made no delay in 
going to the Temple. To do this they 
were compelled to make a considerable 
ascent, for it was situated on one of the 
hills enclosed by the wall of the city. 

The Temple, above all other things, 
fixed their attention. It resembled a for- 
tress, for a formidable wall of defence 
surrounded it on all sides. Joseph, Mary, 
and the child, accompanied, no doubt, 
by other Nazarenes, "their kinsfolk and 
acquaintance, " 1 entered the enclosure by 
a great arched gate, and found themselves 
in an immense court, with porticos run- 
ning around the inner side of the walls. 

In the midst Jesus saw venders, money- 
changers, and buyers inveighing against 
one another; for the first time he heard 
the insulting remarks of Sadducees and 
the vociferations of Pharisees. Impassible 
Roman soldiers were mounting guard just 
as Turkish soldiers do to-day; and all in 
one moment the child had before his eyes 

1 Luke ii. 44. These relatives may have been 
Zebedee and Salome, father and mother of James 
and John. We believe, although these questions of 
relationship are difficult to solve, that Salome was 
Mary's sister, and that James and John, the sons of 
Zebedee, were cousins-german of Jesus. 



BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 49 

a view of the profanation of the Holy 
Place, the narrowness and hatred of the 
religious parties who directed the nation, 
and the oppression of the foreigner who 
held it in custody under a yoke of iron. 
His religious and patriotic feelings were 
at once excited and wounded. It was the 
first contact of Jesus with the priests, 
who looked down upon the poor pilgrims 
coming to offer their ardent devotion, — 
Galileans, who spoke with so displeasing an 
accent, and, worse still, Nazarenes from 
a village out of which nothing good could 
come. 

The pilgrims, however, crossed the great 
court without pausing ; they were in haste to 
pass through the Beautiful Gate, and enter 
the enclosure into which none but Israelites 
might come. Here Mary remained. It 
was the Court of the Women; they were 
not permitted to go farther. Joseph and 
Jesus went on into the court called "Of 
Israel," the place reserved for men. Be- 
fore them was the Platform of the Bene- 
dictions, from which the priest blessed the 
assembled people. Behind it arose the 
smoke of the great altar of sacrifice, 
and, still beyond, the door of the Holy 
4 



50 JESUS CHRIST 

Place, which only the priests might enter. 
Father and child bowed themselves and 
worshipped. 

But the pilgrims had come not merely 
to see; they had come to celebrate the 
Passover. Jesus already knew what fes- 
tival this was ; he knew every one of the 
details of the solemnity about to take 
place, and the great memories which it 
celebrated had long been familiar to him. 

Joseph's first care was to procure a lamb 
for the sacrifice. This was easy; they 
were for sale everywhere. But the price 
was high for one in his circumstances. At 
the birth of Jesus his mother was able to 
offer only the turtle-doves of the poor; and 
no doubt the carpenter of Nazareth had 
been laying aside, for months past, the 
money necessary for the purchase of the 
lamb. The animal chosen, Joseph carried 
it on his shoulders to the Temple, fol- 
lowed by the child. At the entrance of 
the Court of the Priests he handed it 
over to those who conducted the sacrifice. 
They took it from him and offered it upon 
the altar, a blast of the trumpet giving 
the signal for the sacrifice. 

We may imagine the child's emotion, 



BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 51 

the questions that he asked, and all that 
passed in his soul at the sight of this 
sacrifice. 

The animal was flayed and drawn. Its 
entrails and its fat were thrown upon the 
fire. Joseph lifted up the carcass and car- 
ried it away to prepare, with Mary's help, 
the sacred feast. The animal was roasted, 
and not boiled. Not one of its bones was 
broken, and all that might not be eaten 
was to be burned in the fire. 

In earlier days it had been the custom 
to partake of this feast standing, with 
staff in hand, ready for departure, thus to 
reproduce in all its details the scene of 
the departure from Egypt on the night of 
deliverance. But this custom had long 
since fallen into disuse. Every one was 
seated, in oriental fashion, on cushions and 
carpets. The sacred feast was celebrated 
after a ritual order. Four times the cup 
made the round of the table. After the 
first round bitter herbs were brought to be 
eaten with the unleavened bread. These 
bitter herbs, steeped in vinegar, were a 
reminder of the sufferings formerly endured 
in Egypt. 

At this moment Jesus, according to cus- 



52 JESUS CHRIST 

torn, asked Joseph the meaning of all that 
was passing before his eyes. He repeated 
the question twice, and his father replied 
with the story of the exodus from Egypt, 
closing his narrative with the words : " We 
ought to praise, celebrate, honor, and mag- 
nify Him who did these great and marvel- 
lous things for our fathers, and led them 
from bondage to liberty, from sorrow to 
joy, from darkness to a great light. Let 
us then say 'Hallelujah! Praise the 
Lord! ' " At these words the whole family 
sang Psalms cxiii. and cxiv. Then the 
meal went on, and after the fourth and 
last cup those present sang Psalms cxv., 
cxvi., cxvii., cxviii. This was the end. 

The memory of this evening left an in- 
effaceable impression upon Jesus' mind. 
Of all the rites of his people the Paschal 
Feast was certainly that one to which he 
was the most attached. He found a great 
sweetness in celebrating it year after year 
with those whom he loved; and the even- 
ing before his death he said to his apostles, 
"With desire I have desired to eat this 
Passover with you before I suffer." 1 

The next day was the first and great 

1 Luke xxii. 15. 



BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 53 

day of the feast, which had been begun 
the evening before by the Paschal Feast, for 
the Jews did not count the day from mid- 
night to midnight, as we do, but from six 
in the evening until six in the evening of 
the next day. It was not permitted to 
work on either of these days. 

On the next day but one they offered in 
the Temple a sheaf of the new harvest. 
During the seven days of the festival every 
one ate unleavened bread. On the last day 
it was still obligatory to be present. It was 
expressly forbidden to depart from Jerusa- 
lem before the seven days were completed. 

When all had been done, Joseph and 
Mary set off with the Nazareth caravan. 
We know what happened. "The boy 
Jesus tarried behind in Jerusalem; and 
his parents knew it not, but supposing 
him to be in the company, they went 
a day's journey; and they sought him 
among their kinsfolk and acquaintance." 1 

So it came about that they had gone as 
far as Jericho, and perhaps farther, with- 
out being disturbed by the absence of 
Jesus. " When they found him not, they 
returned to Jerusalem seeking for him." 2 

1 Luke ii. 44. 2 Luke ii. 45. 



54 JESUS CHRIST BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 

With hearts torn by anguish they there- 
fore retraced their steps up that steep, 
dangerous, rocky road which lies between 
Jericho and Jerusalem, and which they 
had passed over with Jesus only eight days 
previously. 

" And after three days they found him 
in the Temple, sitting in the midst of the 
doctors, both hearing them and asking 
them questions. And all that heard him 
were astonished at his understanding and 
his answers. And when they saw him 
they were astonished : and his mother said 
unto him, Son, why hast thou thus dealt 
with us ? Behold, thy father and I sought 
thee sorrowing. And he said unto them, 
How is it that ye sought me? Wist ye 
not that I must be in the things of my 
Father? And they understood not the 
saying which he spake unto them. And 
he went down with them, and came to 
Nazareth, and was subject unto them; and 
his mother kept all these sayings in her 
heart. And Jesus advanced in wisdom 
and stature, and in favor with God and 
men." 1 

1 Luke ii. 47-52. 



IV 

FIRST IMPRESSIONS AND 
EXPERIENCES 



CHAPTER IV 

FIRST IMPRESSIONS AND EXPERIENCES 

/^\N their return to Nazareth Jesus began 
to learn his trade under Joseph's 
direction; for he was the eldest, and he 
must toil to aid his parents in bringing up 
his younger brothers and sisters. A child 
of twelve was at that time, in the East, 
as well developed, physically and intel- 
lectually, as a child of fifteen is to-day 
in our western, modern world. Jesus 
would later be called "the carpenter's 
son;" 1 and people would see him accom- 
panying his father, sharing his severe toil, 
and early learning to feel himself a respon- 
sible being. 

After a time Joseph died; everything 
leads us to believe that it was not long 
after this, for he is no longer spoken of, 
and Jesus, the carpenter's son, becomes 
"the carpenter." 2 

1 Matt. xiii. 55. 2 Mark vi. 3. 



58 JESUS CHRIST 

He therefore went on with the paternal 
calling, and soon became the support of 
his mother and the head of the family. 
For long years, he worked at this most 
laborious of trades, being, no doubt, the 
only carpenter in the village. He would 
put roofs upon new houses and mend the old 
ones. Clothed in the humble garments of 
the working-man, — a simple woollen tunic, 
and a turban upon his head, — he went about 
his work, squaring beams, wielding the 
hatchet and axe, directing the men who 
helped him, returning home at evening to 
eat the bread and hard-boiled eggs which 
his mother had prepared before taking from 
the wall the pallet and coverlid in which 
his weary limbs would gain a few hours 
of rest. 

A few indications permit us to divine 
something of what he was among his own 
people, in the bosom of his family. 

When in the upper chamber not one of 
his disciples was willing to wash the feet 
of the others, he, the Master, took upon 
himself this humble office. From this we 
may conclude that readiness to serve and 
to do acts of service must have been a 
feature of his character in childhood. 



BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 59 

Another indication is his love of medita- 
tion and prayer. When we see him, from 
the beginning of his public life, passing 
entire nights in prayer, are we not catch- 
ing a glimpse of a long habit ? Had not 
prayer been in his youth "the breath of 
his soul"? 

A third indication which forces itself 
upon us is tolerance, charity. In one of 
his first public preachings he spoke of lov- 
ing one's enemies, of pardoning those who 
harm one, of giving without hoping to 
receive again. Who will dare to say that 
these precepts were not inspired in him by 
the sweet and vivid memory of the love 
which he had shown to every one at 
Nazareth ? And finally, the solicitude with 
which he concerned himself with his mother 
in his dying moments, and his twofold 
utterance, "Behold thy son!" "Behold 
thy mother!" 1 speak plainly enough of 
the tenderness with which he had always 
surrounded her. 

Thus Jesus increased in wisdom and 
stature, and in favor with God and 
men ; 2 he passed from childhood to youth. 
He reached the age when the attention 

1 John xix. 27. 2 Luke ii. 52. 



60 JESUS CHRIST 

awakes; he put questions to himself; he 
observed what he saw, he reflected upon 
what he heard. Immediately after his first 
journey to Jerusalem, whatever may have 
been his manual labors, he began to occupy 
himself with "the things of his Father." 
The Chazzan, 1 his mother, and perhaps, 
also, some ruler of the synagogue had, 
until this time, been his only religious 
teachers. They no longer sufficed for 
him. To occupy himself with " the things 
of his Father " must have been, as his 
attitude in Jerusalem showed, to interro- 
gate the Doctors and ask them questions. 
From this we conclude with certainty 
that he studied the religious parties 
of his people, and that his curious and 
questioning gaze took in everything which 
claimed religious authority. 

Observation was an important factor in 
the education of Jesus. For example,- it 
was to observation that he owed his entire 
practical theory of life. What he had not 
seen he did not know. He had not seen 
great capitals, great empires; he certainly 
never quitted Palestine, and he had only 

1 This was the name given to the functionary in 
charge of the synagogue and of the holy books. 



BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 61 

an imperfect notion of the Roman Empire 
and the power of "Caesar." No doubt, it 
may be said that when he describes kings 
as personages clothed in fine apparel, who 
live in palaces, with many slaves to do 
their bidding, going in their behalf to 
summon the people whom they have invited 
to dinner, 1 he used this childish language 
simply to put himself on the level of his 
hearers. None the less is it certain that 
he had never seen a king, and that he 
knew no other sovereign than the tetrarch 
Herod Antipas. He therefore could speak 
of the great ones of earth only by hearsay. 

But whatever he had seen he knew. He 
had a gift of penetration, a power and 
keenness of vision, which were of extraor- 
dinary intensity; and the profundity of 
observation which the least of his parables 
presupposes is truly prodigious. He had 
seen everything in Nazareth, and was 
unaware of nothing which went on in that 
village. 

The habits of men and of beasts ; the 
manner of life of the animals in the woods, 
the fields, on the farms; the relations of 
laborers and proprietors ; the price of vari- 

1 Matt. xi. 8 ; xviii. 23; xxii. 2 ft. ; etc. 



62 JESUS CHRIST 

ous commodities ; the habits of villagers ; 
the fold in which the flocks are gathered 
by night ; the shepherd who seeks the stray 
sheep; the hen calling her chickens to her; 
the necessity of a careful choice of ground 
for building ; the time required for a grain 
of mustard seed to become a great tree; 
the destiny of different handfuls of seed 
cast by the sower, some lost for divers 
reasons, the rest dying in good ground in 
order to live again; the making of bread; 
the difference between old wine and new ; 
the way to mend clothes, and the impor- 
tance of washing the inside as well as the 
outside of a dish, — he was familiar with 
them all, and nothing in daily life was 
foreign to him. 

He carried this gift of observation and 
of learning by observation, above all things, 
to the religious customs which prevailed 
around him. He certainly never attended 
the schools of the rabbis in Jerusalem, 
that of Hillel or that of Shammai. He 
was never seen among their pupils. He 
was a carpenter. The people of Nazareth 
knew him as such; and later, when men 
heard him speak, they marvelled precisely 
because he knew so many things and had 



BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 63 

so much wisdom, though he was only " the 
carpenter.'" 

But there is a long way from these facts 
to the conclusion that Jesus had not stud- 
ied. It is certain to us that from his 
tenth to his fifteenth year he studied, in 
the school at Nazareth, the traditional law 
and the minute regulations of Israelitish 
life. He was too well acquainted with 
them for anything else to have been pos- 
sible; and, besides, every young man who 
intended to sound these things even for a 
little way carried on such studies. No 
doubt Jesus possessed neither parchments 
nor diplomas; he was autodidact, that is 
to say, self-taught. But he was a Rabbi ; 
he was called Rabbi Jehoshua Natserieh, 
that is, Rabbi Jesus of Nazareth. Now, 
this was a sort of profession, — a career 
into which it was necessary to be initiated 
by the acquisition of a certain amount of 
knowledge. Though any one might call 
himself Rabbi, he could nevertheless only 
do it in good earnest after preparing him- 
self for his work. 

A Rabbi was a personage whom people 
consulted, who healed the sick, had dis- 
ciples, pronounced aphorisms and max- 



04 JESUS CHRIST 

ims. What had been the studies of 
Jesus? Certainly none which followed a 
well-defined programme, terminating in 
examinations which confer a title or a 
degree. Such studies, examinations, cer- 
tificates, were the affair of the Doctors of 
the Law. The Rabbi was more free; in 
fact, he was entirely free. Rabbi was a 
name given by the people to whoever 
took the ascendant over them and rendered 
them services. But one could only gain 
this ascendant, and the authority which 
conferred upon a man the honor of being 
called Rabbi, after having acquired a cer- 
tain knowledge ; and this knowledge Jesus 
certainly had. He knew too well the 
strength and the weakness of the parties 
of his time not to have very narrowly 
observed these parties, and lived with 
them in closest contact. 

Every Sabbath day after the Synagogue 
the pious men of the town came together 
to read and meditate, to discuss and argue. 
Who will believe that Jesus, after his 
fifteenth year, never went to this school of 
the Rabbis, where they gave themselves 
up to a thorough study of the Scriptures, 
beginning with Leviticus, passing in re- 



BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 65 

view the entire Torah, and after that the 
Prophets ? Jesus certainly was present at 
the meetings of this nature which must 
have been held in Nazareth. The proof 
that he frequented the places where the 
Scribes carried on their arguments is found 
in the fact that he learned their method of 
reasoning. 

It was by arguments like theirs that he 
demonstrated that the resurrection of the 
dead is taught in the Pentateuch ; 1 that he 
answered the Sadducees, who denied a 
future life, 2 and asked how the Messiah 
could be at the same time the Son of 
David and his Lord. 3 The rabbinical 
exegesis was familiar to him, because he 
learned it by hearing the Doctors expound- 
ing the Law and the Prophets. We may, 
then, hold it as certain that Jesus prepared 
himself for his ministry by a very serious 
and attentive study of and acquaintance 
with the Judaism of the schools. 

He did more ; he learned to speak. The 
splendid habit of public speech which he 

1 Matt. xxii. 31, 32; Mark xii. 26, 27; Luke xx. 
37, 38. 

2 Matt. xxii. 23 fE. ; Mark xii. 18 ff. ; Luke xx. 27 ff. 

3 Matt. xxii. 45 ; Mark xii. 37. 

5 



66 JESUS CHRIST 

had from the very first argues a prepara- 
tion which was not a matter of a day. 
This preparation was so complete that 
during his ministry he always gave to his 
words the most admirably finished form, 
so finished that all trace of effort has dis- 
appeared. We can discover none; not 
even in his parables, the structure of which 
is so perfect. It is therefore impossible to 
say here what was the nature of Jesus' 
preparation ; but it is none the less certain 
that he did prepare himself. If at a later 
time he was often compelled to improvise, it 
is evident that he had learned how to do it. 

Jesws, then, like every other man, had 
made his preparation, — with the aid of 
circumstances he had created for himself 
tests and struggles which he must have 
fought out. He profited by all the methods 
of self-instruction which God had put 
within his reach. His character, his mind, 
his intelligence, his whole soul were in- 
cessantly growing during these eighteen 
years. He lent an ear to the lessons given 
by the events of the day, patriotic or reli- 
gious ; he became aware of the hostility of 
men, and was taught by it. 

I hold it also to be highly probable that 



BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 67 

Jesus passed some time in Jerusalem dur- 
ing the eighteen years that lay between 
him and public life. He must have con- 
tinued to go up to the Paschal feasts ; he 
perhaps went to other feasts. That of 
Tabernacles was very popular, and his 
desire to learn, the ardent interest which 
he felt in the "things of his Father," the 
memory which he kept of his first visit to 
Jerusalem, his first sight of the Temple, 
— all lead me to believe that his steps 
were often turned toward the holy city; 
for it is difficult to believe that after 
returning to Nazareth, at twelve years of 
age, he never again left it. But his absences 
were never long; he never made distant 
journeys, and Nazareth was certainly his 
constant place of abode. For thirty years 
he had before his eyes the meagre and nar- 
rowhorizon of his own village. For thirty 
years he lived amicl its cottages, threshing- 
floors, wine-presses. For thirty years he 
looked upon those mountains whose most 
minute outlines had been familiar to him 
from his tenderest infancy. The features 
of this landscape were graven on his 
memory in lines never to be effaced. 
Here, among these shrubs and roses, he had 



68 JESUS CHRIST 

received his first impression of the world, 
and felt his soul awake to a sympathy with 
nature which had been always growing 
stronger. In the brilliancy of the red anem- 
ones, which he called lilies, he had seen the 
resplendent glory of his Father: and upon 
these silent hills he had felt his presence 
and had passed long nights in prayer. 

Among acts preparatory to his public 
life we must include prayer, the hours 
spent with his Father. He knew how to 
"close his door" and "pray to the Father 
who seeth in secret: " but it was especially 
upon the heights which encircle the vil- 
lage that he found solitude and isolation. 
There is, perhaps, not one of the hills near 
Nazareth upon which he has not prayed. 
We have already remarked that if during 
his ministry he loved to withdraw to the 
mountain and pass sometimes the whole 
night there alone with the Father, he cer- 
tainly did it. and often, during the long 
and fruitful years of his preparation. 

There is one of the heights overlooking 
the village which must often have attracted 
him. 1 From hence is seen one of the finest 

i Xow Jebel-es-Sikh, 5J2 metres in height. Naza- 
reth itself is 273 metres above the sea, and 100 metres 



BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 69 

views in all Palestine, and it is beyond all 
doubt that Jesus often looked upon it. 
This height is at the north ; it is the most 
elevated of the immediate environs of 
Nazareth. At Nazareth the view is very 
much shut in; but here, on the contrary, 
the panorama is immense. At the south 
are the mountains of Samaria, beyond 
which may be pictured the dark and unat- 
tractive Judea. On the west lies the 
Carmel range, the double peak dominating 
Megiddo, and in the distance, stretching 
out to infinity, the blue waters of the 
Mediterranean. At the northward may 
be seen the mountains of Jafed, melting 
away into the sea ; and in the farthest dis- 
tance the snow peak of great Hermon. 
Then, turning to the east, the eye is fixed 
by the rounded and graceful forms of 
the mountains of the land of Shechem and 
Mount Tabor. 

Such was the view which Jesus looked 
upon. From that hill, on the side toward 
the sunrise, after a night of deep thought 
and prayer, he would catch a glimpse of 
the Jordan valley, which was later to 

above the plain of Esdraelon. At the summit of 
Jebel-es-Sikh is found the little Waly of Nebi Ishmael. 



70 JESUS CHRIST 

be the scene of his activity, and beyond 
the river, Perea with its high plains ; while 
all around him, at his very feet, was spread 
a prodigious wealth of rich vegetation, and 
lands of such fertility that they were com- 
pared with Paradise. 

In this nature Jesus unceasingly saw the 
face of his Father. He had known this 
Father, and loved him with all his heart, 
all his soul, all his strength, and all his 
thought, from the day when his pious 
mother taught him to lisp his name; and 
after having found his Fatherhood in the 
Old Testament, in the marvellous story of 
the deliverances of his people, he found it 
again on the solitary heights which over- 
look Nazareth. 

Descending 1 from the hill, he found it 
again, everywhere and always, in that 
nature which encompassed him. It re- 
flected the invisible world; it was as if 
transparent, and the serene and benevolent 
face of the Father appeared to him through 
all things. The labors of the country, the 
habits of animals, the slow development 
of plants, the arduous task of shepherds 
and laborers, — eveiwthing interested and 
attracted him, everything served as mate- 



BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 71 

rial for instruction, everything was to him 
a proof of the incessant activity of the 
heavenly Father and his infinite love. 
There was in it, to him, a perpetual rev- 
elation, which preserved him from the hard 
and dry Rabbinism of his contemporaries. 
He collected facts, accumulated experi- 
ences, of which he was later to open the 
inexhaustible treasure to those whom he 
would teach. 

Finally, in his hours of solitude, the 
question of his destiny formulated itself: 
Why am I in the world? What is my 
mission? What is to be my life? He 
asked his Father; he occupied himself 
with the things that concerned Him. The 
Synagogue had revealed to him the exist- 
ence of a multitude of religious questions, 
and had not answered one of them. He had 
read the Prophets, and the mission of his 
people had been revealed to him. But 
one question included all the others, and 
forced itself upon him: Who would be 
the Messiah? When would he appear? 
What work would he accomplish? Thus 
passed eighteen years, and he arrived 
slowly, but surely, at the unalterable con- 
viction, " The Messiah! I myself am he ! " 



V 
STUDIES AND READING 



CHAPTER V 

STUDIES AND READING 

T3EADING was certainly one of the 
principal sources of Jesus' education. 
It is not difficult to divine what books 
he knew and pondered. First of all must 
be named the Old Testament. The one 
which he read was less complete than our 
own. It consisted of two volumes. The 
first, called "The Law," included the five 
books attributed to Moses. They had a 
more particularly sacred character than all 
the others; and every one believed, as we 
have already had occasion to say, that God 
himself had dictated their contents to the 
Hebrew Lawgiver, word by word. The 
second volume, called "The Prophets," 
contained the following books, in the 
order given : Part First, — Joshua, Judges, 
1 Samuel, 2 Samuel, 1 Kings, 2 Kings. 
Part Second, — Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, 
Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, 



76 JESUS CHRIST 

Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, 
Zechariah, Malachi. 

The other books which we find in our 
Old Testament to-day were not yet gathered 
into a sacred collection. They were none 
the less considered as having come from 
God; for every writing bearing the name 
of one of the great men of the past was 
held to be divine. Jesns certainly never 
had the modern notion of a closed, defini- 
tively fixed canon. He read the Book of 
Daniel with the same veneration as those 
of Isaiah and Jeremiah, and yet this book 
was not in the collection which inclnded 
the writings of Isaiah and Jeremiah. But 
Daniel had been one of the most remark- 
able seers of the Exile, and his book con- 
tained revelations of capital importance. 

The same was the case with the Psalms. 
In the time of Jesus these were simply the 
Hymn Book of the Synagogue; but this 
collection of sacred songs was considered 
by the whole people as divine; it was 
sometimes named in connection with the 
Law and the Prophets; men added "and 
the Psalms." 1 On the other hand, there 
are certain books like Ezra, Nehemiah, 

1 Luke xxiv. 44. 



BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 77 

Esther, Ecclesiastes, the Song of Songs, 
which Jesus never quoted; and there are 
some among the number of whose existence 
he was probably always unaware. 

The first book which he knew was cer- 
tainly the Law, because this was the work 
most respected by the people, and because 
he heard it read in the Synagogue every 
Sabbath day. For that matter, the Syna- 
gogue was, without any doubt, his first 
religious school and his first inspiring 
influence. He had early begun to attend 
it with all his veneration and childish 
piety. He continued, as a young man, to 
be present at its services ; and never, dur- 
ing his whole life, did he fail to take part 
in the Synagogue worship. 1 The sermons 
which he heard there every week — for reg- 
ular sermons were preached there — aroused 
him to thought, provoked him to reflec- 
tion. It would happen that these sermons, 
which were explanations of the text, were 
contradictory; and Jesus would assimilate 
one thing, reject another, ask himself how 
he himself would have explained such a 
passage; above all things recoiling from 
the scholasticism which was the canker 
of Judaism in his time. 

1 "As his custom was." Luke iv. 16. 



78 JESUS CHRIST 

The Synagogue of Nazareth, where he 
was one day to read a fragment from 
Isaiah, 1 was a very large rectangular build- 
ing. In the interior there were four 
columns on each side; at the end an ele- 
vated semicircular rostrum, upon which 
were seated the readers and the Scribes. 2 
A great chest contained the sacred manu- 
scripts, and in front of it was a small pul- 
pit. The hall was furnished with benches, 
the seats in the first rows and on the plat- 
form being paid for. These were the 
seats of the wealthy. Joseph and his sons 
would have places on one side of the hall, in 
the free seats ; Mary and her daughters on 
the other side, — - for the sexes were always 
separated. The women were veiled, and 
the men kept on their turbans. 

When the sermon began, a person who 
had been selected beforehand mounted the 
platform and recited the Shema and the 
Shemone Esre; 3 the congregation, stand- 
ing, responded with a loud Amen at the 

1 Luke iv. 17. 

2 These were the architectural features of all 
synagogues, and consequently of the synagogue of 
Nazareth. 

8 For the Shemone Esre see my work "Palestine 
in the Time of Jesus Christ," 5th ed., p. 375 ft 



BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 79 

close of each prayer. No doubt Jesus had 
more than once been called to repeat these 
two prayers. 

After this the Law was read ; that is to 
say, about fifty verses of the Pentateuch. 
The Chazzan, a sort of sacristan, had taken 
from the chest the case containing the 
sacred texts ; and seven men read, by turn, 
three or four verses apiece, in monotonous 
and nasal tones. Every three years the 
entire Pentateuch was thus read through. 
Between his twelfth and thirtieth years 
Jesus must have heard it read six times in 
the Synagogue of Nazareth. Each verse 
was read in Hebrew, the original language, 
and immediately translated into Syriac; 
for the people of Nazareth did not under- 
stand Hebrew. 

In his childhood Jesus understood it no 
more than the others, and he was obliged 
to learn it when he undertook to make a 
private study of the text. It is probable 
that he never spoke it fluently, for not 
one of those utterances of his which the 
Gospels have preserved in their original 
text is in Hebrew. They were all uttered 
in Syriac, his mother tongue; he never 
used any other in conversation, and even 



80 JESUS CHRIST 

when he quoted from the Old Testament, 
he quoted it only as translated into Syriae. 

When the reading was finished, one of 
the readers made an oral comment, an 
exposition, or a sort of homily. As a 
child Jesus long accepted as a matter of 
authority, with no thought of questioning 
them, these interpretations, of which the 
Talmudic commentaries may give us an 
idea. Most generally they were trivial and 
unintelligent remarks, forced reconcilia- 
tions, puerile observations. 

This commentary finished, the individual 
who had recited the opening prayers read 
a passage from the Book of the Prophets. 
Every three verses were translated by an 
interpreter; finally, the benediction was 
pronounced, and the assembly dispersed. 
These various readings and recitations 
were alternated with the singing of Psalms, 
and three deacons gathered the gifts of the 
worshippers for the poor. 

One of the first steps in the self-educa- 
tion of Jesus was certainly to borrow, 
during week days, the roll of the Torah, 
in order to read over again the passage 
commented upon the previous Sabbath. 
Thus he became thoroughly acquainted 



BEFORE HIS MINIS THY 81 

with the history of his people, and the 
stories in the Mosaic books became very 
familiar to him, — the Creation, the Fall, 
Abel, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, all 
the patriarchs, Moses and his mighty 
deeds; then, in the collection of the 
Prophets, David, Solomon, Elijah, Elisha 
were his favorite heroes. 

He had his favorites among the writing 
prophets. He seems not to have enjoyed 
them equally. Isaiah appears to have been 
the author of his choice, and perhaps the 
Psalms alone were more familiar to him 
than this prophecy. It is probable that he 
succeeded in procuring copies of the Scrip- 
tures for himself, which he would not need 
to return to the Synagogue after having 
become acquainted with them ; for the very 
poorest, if they were pious, procured for 
themselves sheets of parchment, upon which 
they copied, or caused to be copied by some 
obliging Scribe, the texts which they most 
cared to read often. The handwriting of 
these manuscripts which Jesus read, after 
having had them copied or copying them 
himself, was precisely that of our Hebrew 
Bibles to-day. 

The Law was to him the Word of God ; 



B2 JESUS CHRIST 

neither more nor less. In his eyes this 
word was the ground of authority. He 

: put a single critical question with 

regard to it. For him, everything that 

emtten was entirely authentic and 

dons. It all came from God; it was 
.-.11 rrae. Tie nrai-al:. "I: is ::::ra " was 
for him the synonym for u G : 1 said. ' ' And 
.-: he felt that in very many respects this 
Word was surpassed in his own case by 
his conscience, by an unerring, secret, and 
immediate intuition of truth which he 
bore within hi m . He presented this unique 
phenomenon, that he was at the same time 
obedient tc the Word of God and superior 
to it. Take, for example, a passage from 
his Sermon on the Mount : "Ye have heard 
that it aid to them of old time, Thou 

shalt not kill , and whosoever shall kill shall 
be in danger of the judgment. But I say 
unto you tha : : ne who is angry with 

his brother shall be in danger of the judg- 
ment. " : He accepted, therefore, the com- 
mandment "Thou shalt not kill; " he did 
not reject it, but he explained it, and sL 
that it implies hatred and wrath; he rose 
from the act : the sentiment which 



BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 83 

tates it. This exegesis appeared to him 
legitimate. He affirmed that his way of 
seeing is the true interpretation of the text, 
and at the same time it was he who spoke, 
and he knew it well ; for he thus speaks : 
"But /say unto you, — /." 

If, now, we study this interpretation 
given by Jesus, in itself, we see that it 
separates that in the Law which is eternal 
from that which is temporary; and we 
shall show, later, that in this he was only 
applying a method which was always his, 
a method which he always made use of 
in all circumstances, — " Abolish nothing , 
fulfil everything." 

We have said that it was especially 
Isaiah and the Psalms which inspired him. 
It was in them, indeed, that he found uni- 
versality, that he learned that all men are 
brothers, that God is the father of all 
men ; that he discovered that worship which 
is of no time nor fatherland, — worship in 
spirit and in truth, independent of rites and 
formulas, which he was ever afterward 
to preach. The Books of Jeremiah and 
Hosea also made a part of his favorite 
reading. He loved to repeat sentences 
drawn from one or another of these 



84 JE8U8 CHRIST 

prophets: for example, this: "I desire 
mercy and not sacrifice."' 1 

The prophets also spoke to him of a res- 
toration in the future, a glorious era soon 
to come, a final redemption which would 
be the triumph of Jehovah: and his faith 
in himself and in an exceptional mission 
awakened and grew strong, comparing 
these visions with the wretchedness which 
surrounded him. this future happiness 
with the woes of his time and people, and 
feeling within himself the growth of a reli- 
gious and moral strength which surpassed 
that of the best among his contemporaries. 

Desirous of studying more closely the 
Messianic hopes of his time, he had recourse 
to those who had specially treated the sub- 
ject; in particular two Apocalypses much 
valued by his contemporaries, — the Book 
of Daniel and that of Enoch. 

He was led to study them by the reli- 
gious and political condition of his nation. 
Continual seditions agitated the people, and 
kept alive the hope of a speedy deliverance. 
Of this profoundly disturbed situation 
Nazareth certainly felt the reflex influence. 
Men must have talked politics in the small 

1 Hosea vi. 6. 



BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 85 

village square on Sabbath days on coming 
out of the Synagogue; they must have 
eagerly questioned every one who had come 
from Jerusalem during the week, asking 
them, "What news is there? Has any 
zealot risen? Has the Procurator com- 
mitted any new crime?" One day some 
one told Jesus that Archelaus had been 
deposed by the Romans, and that they had 
reduced Judea to the rank of a province ; 
another day he learned from the lips of 
some ardent patriot of the uprising of 
Judas the Gaulonite. He had revolted 
and refused to pay the tax. Ought one 
to pay it? Yes, or no. Some said we 
ought not, for God alone is our Master, 
and to pay it is to consent to servitude and 
recognize the power of the Romans. But 
Judas, said others, was put down by the 
Procurator Coponius; ought they not to 
see in his defeat the finger of God, who 
wills that we should render unto Csesar 
the things that are Caesar's? Jesus lis- 
tened to all these impassioned discussions. 
He learned that the death of agitators was 
certain, but he also learned that such 
a death was sought after by them as a 
triumph, and that enthusiasts made it their 



86 jzscs ;^3:'t 

glory to have no care for life, provided 
they could defend to the last the sacred 
cause, — the cause of God. 

In the last analysis all minds were agi- 
tated with the Messianic hope. In every 
line of the Old Testament they saw the 
announcement of the future kingdom; they 
calculated the period of the Messiah's 
coming: and their calculations brought 
them precisel" :: the troubled ticiT in 
which they were living. The Messiah is 
about to appear ! was the uni veisal cry. 

We can unci erat an :".. :lrLr:::T. that Jeans 
would wish to be familiar with the Books 
of Daniel and Enoch. Daniel was the work 
of all others most widely read and vener- 
ated by Jews of the first century. 1 Huh 
book impressed him strongly. It summed 
up the opinions of the best theologians : I 
the preceding centuries. It gave a true 
philosophy of history, and, subordinating 
everything to the Jewish people, saw in 
the succession of empires only the accom- 
plishment of the will of God with regard 
to his chosen people. 

In the Book of Daniel Jesus read for 
the first time the name u Son of man. by 

1 Josephns, Ami. x. 1 1 V 



BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 87 

which he at a later time chose to designate 
himself. He found there, also, the pre- 
diction of the universal empire of the 
righteous, and the clear and positive affir- 
mation of the resurrection from the dead. 

The Book of Enoch, in its turn, made 
these predictions more definite. Jesus did 
not read it in the form in which we possess 
it, for this book is composed of fragments, 
and more than one of them is later than 
Jesus Christ. But it is easy to distinguish 
these ; and the Palestinian origin of many 
passages certainly anterior to Christianity 
is to-day beyond all dispute. 

Jesus read those passages which are 
apparently of Essenian origin. The author 
expects a last assault of Gentile — that is, 
Syrian — power. This assault, repulsed 
by God, will be followed by a judgment. 
The fallen angels and faithless Jews will 
be cast into the pit. A new Jerusalem 
will be built by God, and pious Israelites 
will there receive the homage of the Gen- 
tiles. Then will appear the Messiah. He 
is represented under the image of a white 
bull. All the Gentiles will pray to him, and 
will be converted to the true God. 

To the reading of these books Jesus per- 



88 JESUS CHRIST 

haps added that of the Psalms of Solomon, 
— a collection composed about sixty-three 
years before his birth. In it he found the 
announcement of the kingdom of God, and 
the perpetuity of this kingdom in the house 
of David. A king descended from David 
should be raised up by God to destroy the 
enemies of Israel and drive out the Gen- 
tiles from Jerusalem. This king would be 
righteous; he would be the Anointed of 
the Lord, full of the Spirit of God, and 
pure from all sin. 

Did Jesus know any other works, lost to 
us, of the very existence of which we are 
ignorant, which spoke of the glorious 
things which the Jewish people would 
perform, and of the eternal kingdom which 
God would set up in a near future ? It is 
lawful to suppose so ; for if any one was 
eager to become acquainted with all pre- 
dictions and search out their meaning, if 
any one was able to draw from them the 
fragments of truth which they contained, it 
assuredly must have been Jesus. 

Still we cannot but notice how remote 
from his thought was all the strange, fan- 
tastic, exaggerated side of these apocalyptic 
visions. What a distance between his sim- 



BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 89 

pie, popular teachings, figurative no doubt, 
but with figures always quiet and cohe- 
rent, and the books of his people, with their 
tissues of false and fantastical symbolism ! 

In these books everything is allegorical ; 
and, indeed, in the time of Jesus allegory 
was used by everybody in all cases. But 
there is not a trace of this sort of metaphor 
in his own teachings, and it is certain that 
he alone of all his people was distinctly 
repelled by this pretentious allegorism. 
In the matter of allegory he had only 
parables, — a sort of comparison, of which 
one of the greatest merits is that it is mar- 
vellously natural and simple, while in the 
Book of Enoch, for example, all is strange, 
exaggerated, complicated. The advent of 
the Messiah is there predicted, with all 
the tremendous and terrifying events which 
are to come with him. Cataclysms succeed 
one another, each more extraordinary than 
the preceding; but Jesus, who was famil- 
iar with these high-flown descriptions, re- 
mained always independent of them. 

His exegesis of the Old Testament itself 
has a sobriety and discernment which sin- 
gularly cut loose from the exegesis of his 
time. The Doctors and Scribes excelled 



90 JESUS CHE 1ST BEEOEE HIS MINISTRY. 

at finding in the Scriptures what was not 
there. The Law was for them the object 
of the most subtle interpretations. In the 
Prophets and the Psalms they discovered 
a great number of characteristics referable 
to the Messiah, and claimed that they 
recognized him in all parts of the Scrip- 
tures. Now, it does not appear that 
Jesus was ever led astray by these so- 
called discoveries. Upon this point he 
distinctly separated himself from those 
who had been his guides. 

Without reserve he admired the sublime 
poetry of the Psalms and the magnificent 
disclosures of Isaiah. These books, and 
others like them, were the principal ali- 
ment of his piety, and his support day by 
day. Isaiah was one of his masters: but 
nothing indicates that he found in his 
writings anything which was not there, or 
that he accepted the subtle explanations 
and forced exegesis of his contemporaries. 
Nothing indicates that Jesus ever under- 
stood the Scriptures otherwise than in 
their veritable sense, recognizing the Mes- 
siah where he is clearly announced, and 
refusing to discover him where he certainly 
is not to be found. 



VI 
JESUS AND THE PHARISEES 



CHAPTER VI 

JESUS AND THE PHARISEES 

T T is generally admitted that among the 
Jews in the time of Jesus Christ there 
were three sects, — the Pharisees, the Sad- 
ducees, and the Essenes. But when Jose- 
phus makes this statement, he completely 
misrepresents Palestinian Judaism in the 
first century. Of these three categories of 
religionists, certain Essenes of strict ob- 
servance were the only sectaries. It may 
be said that the Sadducees also formed a 
party, but it was of very trifling moment. 
The priests of Jerusalem, the pontiffs in 
the Temple, alone preferred Sadduceeism. 
They were only a small, uninfluential 
group, confined to the sanctuary. 

As to the Pharisees, far from being sec- 
taries, they were the nation itself. They 
represented the general condition of reli- 
gious minds in Palestine in the first cen- 
tury. Every pious Jew was, if one may 



94 JESUS CHRIST 

use the expression, modelled after the 
Pharisees. The Pharisees had taken pos- 
session of the synagogues. They directed 
the teachings there given; and hence 
whoever among the Jews was seriously 
concerned with religion, whoever had any 
piety, was of the number of the Phar- 
isees. It may be said, in consequence, 
that Jesus also, in his youth, was under 
Pharisaic influence. 

The opposition which is always assumed 
between Pharisaism and Christianity rests 
in part upon the celebrated invective, eight 
times repeated, "Woe unto you, Scribes 
and Pharisees, hypocrites," etc. 1 But 
Jesus said these words exactly as a 
preacher of our days might say from his 
pulpit, " Woe unto you, proud and hypo- 
critical Christians, who make a point of 
attending the services of the Church, and 
yet are formalists, not practising during 
the week what you hear on Sunday! " No 
doubt modern preachers are in the habit of 
expressing themselves in more moderate 
terms ; but, the form apart, they continually 
say similar things to their hearers. Who 
would conclude from this that all Chris- 

1 Matt, xxiii. 



BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 95 

tians are of this sort ; that the preacher who 
thus speaks is their adversary, and that 
they are his irreconcilable enemies? No 
one. Yet from the invectives of Jesus 
men have concluded that all Pharisees 
were hypocrites; and the word "Phari- 
see " has become a synonym for the word 
"Jesuit." Many are the historical errors, 
received as indisputable truths, which rest 
upon misunderstandings of this sort. 

Let me attempt to show the true char- 
acter of Pharisaism in the time of Jesus 
Christ. 

The Pharisees and the Essenes — of 
whom we shall speak in the next chapter 
— represented two sides of the same ten- 
dency which Jesus thoroughly knew, toward 
which he felt himself in many respects 
drawn, and from which he borrowed not a 
little. Far from considering Pharisaism, 
as a whole, dangerous, and all Pharisees 
enemies, he had a number of them among 
his friends; he often ate with them, and 
at a later day his Church was very largely 
recruited from among the Pharisees. 

The Talmud distinguishes several classes 
of Pharisees, and only one among the seven 
which it mentions was the object of the 
merited reprobation of Jesus. 



96 JESUS CHRIST 

The work of the Pharisees, as a whole, 
and apart from a few regrettable excep- 
tions, consisted in spiritualizing Judaism 
by detaching it from the Temple, the 
sacrifices, and the whole sacerdotal ritual. 
This part of the Jewish religion was in 
the hands of the Sadducees, — rich aristo- 
crats who lived in the Temple and by the 
Temple, and, so to speak, never left the 
Temple; whose influence over the people 
was naught, and who were to be found 
only at Jerusalem. With the Sadducees 
the rite alone was of importance. They 
were the incarnation of the narrowest 
formalism, and concerned themselves not 
at all with ideas and beliefs. Jesus never 
felt anything but aversion, and even a 
profound and legitimate repugnance for 
Sadduceeism. The Sadducees returned it 
to him with interest, and at bottom they 
were his only real enemies. It was these 
formalists without piety, these aristocrats 
without either faith or good faith, who 
condemned him to death. Jesus never 
opposed them in words. He imitated the 
Pharisees, their ancient political foes, who 
in the first century had long stood aloof 
from them; thev thinkinsr. not without 



BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 97 

reason, that these sceptics, who had the 
habits without the convictions of religion, 
were at once despicable, and without 
danger to true Judaism. 

Furthermore, during his entire youth 
Jesus knew nothing about the Sadducees. 
His visits to Jerusalem were too infre- 
quent and too brief for it to be possible for 
him to come into relations with them. 

The Pharisees, as we have said, were 
masters of the synagogues. There they 
spiritualized Judaism, a work of which 
Jesus certainly approved; and when the 
latter said, with Hosea, in the name of 
Jehovah, "I desire mercy, and not sacri- 
fice," he adopted one of their favorite 
maxims. During the early part of his 
ministry Jesus had intimate and frequent 
relations with this class of Pharisees, 
who were not, I admit, the entire body, 
but who, I believe, formed the great 
majority of it. Very few of them, it is 
true, had the courage to approve him 
openly; but more than one of them had 
secret relations with him. One came to 
him by night; 1 another warned him that 
Herod desired to kill him ; 2 some of them 

i John iii. 1. 2 Luke xiii. 31. 

7 



98 JESUS CHRIST 

were not afraid to invite him to their 
houses, and receive him at their tables. 1 

The day was to come, however, when 
there would be a rupture between Jesus 
and the Pharisees. This day would be 
one of the most solemn of his life. We 
shall speak of it in detail when we study 
the ministry of Jesus Christ. The Phari- 
sees would at length go so far as to concert 
together to compass the destruction of 
Jesus. If some among them remained 
true to him, they hid themselves, and not 
one of them dared to undertake his defence 
at the time of his trial. It is even very 
possible that in the Sanhedrin which con- 
demned Jesus there were a few Pharisees, 
although the majority were evidently 
Sadducees. 

If the Pharisees, as a whole, were the 
moderate party, much beloved by the peo- 
ple, resisting the corruption and impiety 
of the Sadducees ; if Jesus was one day to 
counsel men to do all that they said, — 
"The Scribes and Pharisees sit on Moses' 
seat : all things, therefore, whatsoever they 
say unto you, these do and observe," 2 — 

1 Luke xi. 37. 

2 Matt, xxiii. 2. 



BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 99 

he would nevertheless add that they acted 
otherwise than they taught, "They say 
and do not," and he was the irreconcilable 
adversary of that which is to-day called 
Pharisaism. 

From all these facts I think we may 
conclude that during the years which pre- 
ceded his public life Jesus studied the 
Pharisaic doctrines closely and with much 
sympathy, and that, far from having been 
from the first the adversary of the Phari- 
sees, he began by being their friend. He 
heard them preach the love of God and of 
one's neighbor, deprecate bloody sacrifices, 
proclaim the imperious duty of obedience 
to the Law in order to be perfect in this 
world and to receive the reward of the 
kingdom of heaven. How should he not 
have approved of them, — he who was to 
give precisely this teaching in the earlier 
days of his ministry? 

It must not be forgotten that the Phari- 
saic doctors had gained much in spirituality 
during the time immediately preceding the 
Christian era. Hillel had undertaken to 
defend the moral law against the corrup- 
tion of the times, to replace the Temple 
worship with a more spiritual adoration, 



100 JESUS C HEIST 

and to sum up the whole Law in the love 
of God and one's neighbor. It was a 
Pharisee who declared that to love one's 
neighbor as oneself was "more than all 
whole burnt offerings and sacrifices." 1 
Jesus would one day blame the hypocriti- 
cal Pharisees ; but the other Pharisees also 
blamed them. Although many did, in 
fact, make an external devotion a means 
of influence over the people, the Talmud 
condemned this: it rejected the "painted " 
Pharisees, as it called them, — the double- 
faced men who affected to be true Pharisees 
and were not. 

It may even be affirmed not only that 
Jesus associated with Pharisees before his 
ministry, but that in a sense he was one 
of them. In fact, the Pharisaism of the 
time was, as we have shown, the true 
Judaism, the authentic and loyal Judaism. 
And Jesus was a Jew by birth, by belief, 
by innermost conviction, by all that he 
had received in the strictly orthodox sur- 
roundings in which he had grown up. 
And what did he at first purpose to do? 
He purposed, with the best among the 
Pharisees, to spiritualize the old Mosaism, 

1 Mark xii. 33. 



BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 101 

to fulfil it, by bringing it out from the 
narrow rut in which the Sadducees were 
Stirling it. Therefore we see him imme- 
diately adopt, and all his life preach, 
the fundamental belief of the Pharisees, 
namely, the resurrection of the body. It 
was one of their essential dogmas, and in 
affirming it the Doctors of the second 
Temple had made an important innova- 
tion, for which it is difficult to find justi- 
fication in the written Law. Jesus did as 
they did ; and so certain is it that he held 
this doctrine from the Pharisees, that we 
find him making use of the arguments of 
the Pharisees to justify himself, 1 citing the 
Torah as they did, and replying to the 
Sadducees as the Pharisees might have 
done. 

What, then, was definitely the attitude 
of Jesus in face of Pharisaism? Was he 
a Pharisee in youth, only to abandon the 
party at a later day ? Certainly not. We 
have just shown in what sense it may be 
said that Jesus was a Pharisee; but he 
never belonged to any party, to any school ; 
he never gave up his independence, and 
never accepted the party cry of any one. 
1 Matt. xxii. 23 f£. 



102 JESUS CHRIST 

He was amenable only to his Father and 
himself. 

Not that he isolated himself, and would 
learn nothing that his contemporaries 
might have been able to teach him. All 
that we have hitherto said tends to prove 
the contrary. If Jesus belonged to no 
party, no party was a stranger to him. 
He knew, studied, understood them all. 
Let us rather say he had assimilated them 
all, with a penetration whose power and 
depth cannot be too much admired; and 
with regard to each of them he fulfilled all 
and destroyed nothing. 

The day would come when he would use 
this expression to characterize his attitude 
toward the Law. It may be applied to his 
attitude toward all parties and all doctrines 
of his time. Still more, the word is one 
which reveals that which was the con- 
stant method of Jesus. And yet the term 
"method" is not exact, for it supposes a 
predetermined system consciously applied 
to men and things ; while with Jesus it was 
the very essence of what for want of a 
better term we will dare to call his genius. 
Everywhere and in all things, whether 
with regard to the Old Testament, to 



BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 103 

Moses and the prophets, with regard to 
the religious parties which surrounded 
him, Pharisees or Essenes, or with regard 
simply to such a detail as the adoption of 
the term "Son of man " or the rule for the 
observance of the Sabbath, or with regard 
to what was to be understood by the King- 
dom of God, the advent of the Mes- 
siah, the Judgment, the age to come, he 
accepted, comprehended, penetrated, as- 
similated them all, and at the same time 
transformed, renewed, regenerated, created 
them all anew. He made the partition 
between that which passes away and that 
which remains, that which is perishable 
and that which is eternal; he preserved 
the seed and let fall the husk. 

Jesus therefore kept a complete inde- 
pendence with regard to all the parties of 
his time. Never, in any place, do we see 
him enrolling himself under any banner 
whatsoever ; and it was certainly thus dur- 
ing that long portion of his life which is 
not known to us. Scrupulous observer of 
the beliefs of his people and their religious 
traditions, conservator of the past, he trans- 
formed and spiritualized it, while before 
all else remaining himself. It is therefore 



104 JESUS CHRIST 

not exact to say that he was subject to the 
influence of the religious parties of his 
time, for he was- subject to nothing, and he 
never accepted any doctrine ready made. 
He was often in sympathy with the ideas 
that surrounded him. but he never per- 
mitted himself to be led away by them. 
His sympathy helped him to understand 
them, but it never blinded him. He 
examined, he judged all these ideas, and 
either rejected or adopted them. Neither 
conservative nor revolutionary, he yet was 
both, bringing about the greatest revolu- 
tion of history while conserving the past, 
but making it entirely new. 

Such. then, was the unique feature 
which made the invariable character of 
the line of conduct followed by Jesus with 
regard to every idea, principle, belief, 
institution which presented itself to him 
for examination. He retained its perma- 
nent element, and rejected the element 
that was transitory. He tore off the en- 
velope and kept the contents. With sure 
and swift glance he distinguished that 
which is eternal from that which is tran- 
sitory, taking no notice of the latter, and 
proclaiming the absolute value of the 



BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 105 

former. I repeat : whether the subject were 
the Law, the Temple, the sacrifices, the 
prophets, the Pharisees, the Essenes, al- 
ways, everywhere, without a single varia- 
tion, thus he acted. 



VII 

JESUS AND THE ESSENES 



CHAPTER VII 

JESUS AND THE ESSENES 

A FTER Pharisaism comes Essenism. 
Jesus could not have done other 
than study these strange sectaries, and in 
many respects he must have felt himself 
drawn toward them. No doubt he asked 
himself if there was not something here, 
— a suggestive line of conduct, an initia- 
tion to receive, in view of his coming work. 
Among the Essenes, side by side with 
impossible caprices and veritable extrava- 
gances, there was an elevation, a moral 
grandeur, which could not fail to impress 
Jesus. 

He has been pictured as leaving Nazareth 
and going to study the Essenian practices 
in the convents of the oasis of Engedi. 
We shall be on our guard against these 
descriptions, in which there is more imagi- 
nation than reality. But one fact remains : 



110 JESUS CHRIST 

Jesus knew the Essenes well, and prac- 
tised Essenism to a great degree. 

Let us transport ourselves to the first 
century. Let us walk along the shores of 
the Lake of Tiberias and through the vil- 
lages of Galilee. We shall meet men in 
white garments, whose life is pure and who 
are much loved by the people. They are 
believed to have the gift of prophecy and 
of miracles, and every one attaches great 
importance to their words and actions. 
They enjoy an authority which the Scribes 
never succeed in gaining. 

They systematically abstain from pol- 
itics, and carefully separate that which 
belongs to Caesar from that which belongs 
to God. They love solitude and prayer, 
but at the same time are active and zealous. 
Their preferences lead them among the 
poor and the sick. Of the greatest sobriety, 
they partake of only a single dish at a 
meal. It is their custom to go from place 
to place, surrounded by disciples, and one 
member of the little group carries the com- 
mon purse. For that matter, they live 
only on what is given to them, and being 
little concerned with the material details 
of life, they feel no anxiety for the mor- 



BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 111 

row. They carry with them neither gold 
nor silver, neither wallet nor provisions, 
nor a change of garments. They count 
upon finding brethren in the houses which 
they may enter, to supply them with what- 
ever they may need, and they perceive by 
the manner in which their salutation of 
peace is received, whether the house they 
have entered is or is not occupied by 
friends. 

Many of them renounce marriage, the 
better to consecrate their lives to their 
work; but marriage is by no means for- 
bidden them. Models of virtue, of probity, 
of disinterestedness, they disapprove of 
slavery, they never take oath, and forbid 
their disciples to do so, confining them- 
selves to saying yea, yea, or nay, nay; 
and their word is more respected than the 
oaths of other men. Finally, they celebrate 
in common a religious meal of a sacred 
character. 

Many Essenes occupy themselves in 
preaching and healing diseases. They also 
baptize and permit their disciples to bap- 
tize. A certain number perform miracles, 
and they acquire a great reputation by 
their supernatural cures. They apply 



112 JESUS CHRIST 

themselves more particularly to casting 
out demons, and they are held to be most 
successful in the practice of exorcism. 

One of their fundamental beliefs is the 
near appearance of the kingdom of God, 
and they make this announcement the 
foundation of their preaching. They call 
it the kingdom of heaven (Malchiith-hash- 
shamayim). They say that men must pre- 
pare themselves for this event, and that 
Judaism is on the verge of a terrible crisis, 
after which will come the times of the 
Messiah. To hasten the arrival of this 
blessed time men should sell their goods 
and give the money to the poor. They 
themselves have put in practice this pre- 
cept; they have sold their goods, which 
were unrighteous riches; and they have 
this advantage over the Pharisees that 
what they say they do, while the Pharisees 
say and do not: therefore the Essenes 
accuse the latter of being hypocrites. 

To recall these details is to show at once 
that which nascent Christianity had in 
common with Essenism; and to say that 
Jesus did not practise Essenism, especially 
in the beginning of his ministry, and when 
he was in relations with John the Baptist, 



BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 113 

whose words and mode of life offered 
many points of resemblance to those of the 
Essenes, is to deny the very evidence. 

But it would be a grave mistake to 
undertake to explain Jesus by saying he 
was an Essene; for he no more belonged 
to this party than to any other. He was 
always at an incomparable height above 
Essenism, and he treated it as he treated 
Pharisaism, with entire liberty and com- 
plete detachment. If he adopted certain 
of their customs and even of their ideas, 
which is undeniable, he separated himself 
squarely from them upon that which was 
the very foundation of their purpose. 

The customs of Essenism were his own 
customs, and he could not do otherwise 
than love the virtues, the morality, the 
disinterestedness of the Essenes ; but those 
whom he resembled in outward practice, 
those who went here and there, preach- 
ing the kingdom of God and surrounding 
themselves with disciples, held doctrines 
against which Jesus constantly protested. 
Their incessant concern was to avoid by 
exterior purifications the uncleannesses for- 
bidden by Moses, and to practise Levitical 
purity in all its austere rigor. Hence their 



114 JESUS CHRIST 

bathings, their ablutions, their baptisms, 
which Jesus did not immediately reject, 
perhaps, but which he early repudiated. 

The fourth gospel tells us this in a pas- 
sage which is certainly historic, and to 
which we shall return in speaking of John 
the Baptist. Jesus at first baptized, it 
says ; x then he himself left off, but per- 
mitted the disciples to baptize. 2 But it 
is probable that he did not long permit 
them to do it. All that took place at the 
beginning, when his ministry and that of 
John the Baptist were still mingled with 
one another. But discussions about bap- 
tism arose, of which the Evangelist John 
has preserved the echo; 3 and then Jesus 
entirely and completely separated himself 
from these practices. 

Besides, true Essenes, consistent Es- 
senes, those who were convinced of the 
impossibility of subjecting themselves to 
all the exigencies of the Law, did not re- 
main in the world. They retired into 
monasteries built on the west of the Red 
Sea. In the oasis of Engedi they lived 

1 John iii. 22. 

2 John iv. 1, 2. 

3 John iii. 25 ff. 



BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 115 

upon dates, a pure aliment, and plunged 
into pure water several times a day. 
Poor dreamers, given to mystical and 
esoteric speculations, they avoided the 
stains of the body, and believed that thus 
they avoided those of the soul. They 
were never more severely condemned than 
by Jesus, who cried, "Not that which 
goeth into a man can defile a man, but 
that which cometh out of a man." 1 Jesus 
certainly adopted nothing but their out- 
ward customs; in all other respects he 
always stood aloof from them. 

With regard to Essenism, his conduct 
was the same that it was in regard to all 
other things, — destroying in order to ful- 
fil. During his ministry he retained only 
a superficial resemblance to the Essenes. 
Here again, here more than elsewhere, he 
kept only that which abides, and energet- 
ically cast away all that is perishable and 
outworn. He kept of Essenism only the 
moral life which animated it, and let fall 
the coarse husk which enveloped its 
idea and kept it imprisoned in the nar- 
rowest and most superannuated legalism. 

1 Mark vii. 14, 15. The entire chapter is the 
condemnation of Essenism. 



116 JESUS CHRIST 

Furthermore, other thoughts occupied 
him. The Essenes preached the kingdom 
of God and announced the Messianic times. 
but they never spoke of the person of the 
Messiah. With Jesus this was the matter 
of supreme interest. The Messiah was 
about to appear! Who could he be? 

Was it, then, in one of his hours of 
retreat upon the Jebel-es-Sikk, that for 
the first time the sublime thought came to 
him, " What if I were the Messiah ! What 
if I should accomplish the expected 
work! What if I were the One sent by 
the Father! Oh, to overthrow Satan's 
throne, — to vanquish sin, sorrow, and 
death!" Was not that a call which he 
heard? Was it the divine call? Per- 
haps. Was the hour marked by the Father 
about to strike, and to strike for him ? 

Yet a little while and he was to make 
the acquaintance of the extraordinary man 
under whose influence he would pronounce 
the definitive Yes. John the Baptist was 
to have the signal honor, the imperishable 
glory, of revealing Jesus to himself, of 
helping him to hear God, of forcing upon 
him the conviction: "I am the Messiah, 
and the hour for action has come." The 



BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 117 

Father's hour was to strike at the never 
to be forgotten moment of his baptism. 
John the Baptist was on the banks of the 
Jordan ; he was moving the people ; he was 
about to move the very soul of Jesus. 



VIII 
JESUS AND JOHN THE BAPTIST 



CHAPTER VIII 

JESUS AND JOHN THE BAPTIST 

r ~PHE only lasting influence which was 
exerted upon Jesus was that of 
John the Baptist. Certainly he also was 
to be surpassed some day; but just here, 
above all things, in separating himself 
from John, Jesus kept the best that the 
latter had given him; and through his 
whole life he retained a remembrance of 
John full of gratitude and admiration. 
Behind Luther was Staupitz; and there 
are few men who have exerted a great 
influence who have not had their pre- 
cursors. 

As Jesus drew near to his thirtieth year, 
he heard about this young and pious 
ascetic, full of ardor, who was called John 
the Baptist, and whose moral and religious 
influence had in a short time become re- 
markable. Jesus immediately had a very 
clear intuition that he had much to learn 



122 JESUS CHRIST 

from this man, and, quitting Nazareth with 
a few disciples, his relatives or his friends, 
he set out to see and hear him. 

John — or, more correctly, Johanan — 
was on the banks of the Jordan, at the 
boundary of the wilderness of Judea as 
one comes from Galilee, in a sequestered 
valley, covered with a vigorous vegetation, 
in the midst of tamarisks and willows. He 
was preaching there, in words of a rough 
and aggressive eloquence which exerted a 
strange influence. People came in crowds 
to hear him. 

At first Jesus mingled with the crowd 
and listened like the others. He heard 
John pronounce long discourses, impas- 
sioned and fiery,, the principal theme being 
the oft repeated words, "Repent, for the 
kingdom of heaven is at hand!" 1 No 
miracle accompanied these words. John 
did no miracles, and made no pretension of 
doing any. It is not said that sick people 
were brought to him or that he busied 
himself with healing. He was concerned 
only with a moral regeneration. Never- 
theless, he performed one religious act, 
though only one, — baptism. Those among 
1 Matt. iii. 2, and parallel passages. 



BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 123 

his auditors who desired moral regeneration 
and confessed their sins were led by him 
to the river Jordan. There he baptized 
them; that is to say, he effected a com- 
plete immersion of their whole body in the 
water. It was his only rite. 

This baptism was not a mere sign, 
designed to make an impression on the 
multitude, but also a preparation and con- 
secration for the kingdom of God, which 
was imminent. It created a bond between 
all John's disciples. It testified to the 
renunciation of the former life, entrance 
into a new life, and, above all, the ardor 
of the Messianic hope. John was con- 
vinced that the hour of Jehovah was about 
to strike. 

John was a Universalist. While contin- 
uing to be a Jew, he foresaw and preached 
a reaction against the narrowness of cer- 
tain Pharisees. He said, " God is able of 
these stones to raise up children unto Abra- 
ham," l which was the same as saying that 
one could be the son of Abraham without 
descending from Abraham. 

All this Jesus saw and heard. The 
impression that he received from it was 

1 Luke iii. 8. 



124 JESUS CHRIST 

very profound. That which first struck 
him was that John was not an ordinary 
anchorite. For he was not concerned with 
his own sanctification, but solely with the 
sins of his nation. Next he was impressed 
by the conviction with which the soul of 
John was filled, that he had a mission to 
accomplish, that he held it from God alone, 
and that only he could do it. Jesus was 
not long in arriving at the certainty that 
the prediction of the second coming of 
Elias made by the Scribes had received its 
accomplishment in the person of John the 
Baptist. "This is he," he said, "who is 
Elias that was to come." 1 Upon this 
important point he never wavered ; 
to the end of his life he was persuaded 
that John had been the personification of 
Elias. This is the more remarkable since 
John himself refused to be taken for Elias, 
and declared that he was not Elias. 2 We 
do not know whether or not Jesus was 
aware of this denial by John the Baptist. 
In any case, he retained his opinion. 

Very soon he felt himself entirely won 
over; everything in the person and work 

1 Matt. xi. 14, and parallel passages. 

2 John i. 21. 



BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 125 

of this remarkable man inspired him with 
confidence. From the place of hearer he 
passed into that of friend. He entered 
into relations with John, and their associa- 
tion at once became very close and very 
affectionate. Jesus loved his substitution 
of a private rite for legal ceremonial; he 
loved his preaching, which harmonized so 
well with all that he himself experienced. 

John spoke against rich priests, against 
prevaricating Pharisees, against formalist 
Doctors of the Law, — against the whole 
official community, asleep in a false and 
delusive security. He expressed with un- 
equalled boldness and courage that which 
Jesus had long been thinking. 

Jesus found in John's utterances all that 
was best in Essenian doctrine, and he found 
in them nothing of that which had dis- 
pleased him in that doctrine. John the 
Baptist had certainly known and studied 
Essenism; he borrowed much from it, 
even going so far as to advocate a sort 
of community of goods ; x but he had 
never desired to be of their number. He 
was too independent and too original to 
affiliate himself with a sect and an estab- 

i Luke iii. 10, 11. 



126 JESUS CHRIST 

lished order. He indignantly repelled the 
formalism and legalism of the Essenes. 
In his view, baptism was to be administered 
only once, — "one baptism; " this also be- 
came the Christian doctrine. 1 

Jesns loved and admired this free 
Essene, detaching himself from cloistered 
Essenism, issuing from his retreat out of 
the fulness of his compassion for perishing 
souls, and uttering his magnificent cry of 
alarm and hope ! 

Listening to John the Baptist, Jesus 
took lessons in preaching and in popular 
oratory; his ideas about the kingdom of 
God and the good news to come began to 
ripen. Everything here was instructive 
and suggestive; we can understand the 
great emotion which took possession of 
him, and how he was impelled to say, 
"This is Elias that was to come." 

At last Jesus took the decisive step. 
He asked for and received baptism. He 
was urged to this by divers motives, easy 

1 Eph. iv. 5. Nevertheless, in the Epistle to the 
Hebrews, "baptisms" are spoken of in the plural 
(vi. 2), and the author appears to consider it quite as 
important for those who would approach God to 
have the body washed in pure water as to have the 
heart and conscience purified from all evil (x. 22). 



BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 127 

to understand. In the first place, he 
desired to show his entire adherence to 
John's work. More than this, he desired 
to take his place also among the insignifi- 
cant and humble ones who were breaking 
with the past, declaring that the time was 
fulfilled, and a new era about to begin. 
And finally, Jesus had decided to preach 
like John, to leave Nazareth and go up 
and down the country, saying, like the 
Baptist, "Repent, for the kingdom of 
heaven is at hand." Therefore he must be 
baptized. 

This act which he purposed, this humili- 
ation which he was about to impose on 
himself, taking his place in all simplicity 
and love of sinners in the ranks of those 
who confess their faults, was to receive at 
once a magnificent reward. At the precise 
moment when he was coining up out of the 
water his Messianic dignity was revealed 
to him. In fact, his baptism marks the 
awakening of his Messianic consciousness. 
What he had already foreboded was now 
affirmed. The question which for some 
time he had been asking himself, " Might 
it be I ? " received its answer. The inward 
crisis through which he was passing came 



128 JESUS CHRIST 

to its acme and reached its end. He heard 
the voice of God saying to him clearly, 
"Thou art my well beloved son." The 
voice resounded to the depths of his soul. 
Jesus heard God. We cannot for an in- 
stant doubt it ; for from this sacred hour 
his conviction was not to be shaken. It 
was an absolute certainty; nothing could 
thenceforth weaken it. 

He had come to the point where he 
could say, "I am the Messiah," because, 
feeling himself the child of the Father, he 
experienced an irresistible desire to realize 
among men this divine sonship. The 
development of his moral consciousness 
had brought him to this definite convic- 
tion, to a certitude which to him bore the 
marks of absolute evidence. 

But what kind of Messiah was he to be ? 
What work was he to accomplish ? This 
question he put to himself, and went on 
to seek for its answer. More and more 
convinced that in listening to the Baptist 
and carrying on a work like his he would 
be in the right way, he immediately began 
to imitate John. After receiving baptism, 
he in his turn conferred it. The few 
disciples whom he had brought from 



BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 129 

Nazareth, and who also had been bap- 
tized, did the same thing, and the banks of 
the Jordan were covered with baptizers. 1 

It was not long before a new light shone 
into the soul of Jesus. Asking himself 
what kind of Messiah he should be, and 
what his work, he began to understand, 
though not yet able to answer his own 
question, that John's preaching no longer 
sufficed for him, and that he must carry 
John's work farther. He perceived that, 
with all his greatness, John was still the 
man of the past, and of a past which he 
could not break with. The Baptist's infe- 
riority became apparent to him. He was 
compelled to leave him behind; certainly 
John could never go to the end of the way. 
In his predictions of the work and office of 
the coming Messiah there were features 
which Jesus could not accept. John could 
not and would not break with the tradi- 
tional notion of the Messiah. He looked 
for a king of glory ; he was always talking 
of a Judgment, of vengeance, and a reign 
of iron. 

But the idea of a Messiah reigning by 
force inspired in Jesus an invincible repug- 

i John iii. 22-26 ; iv. 1, 2. 



130 JESUS CERT ST 

nance. He must work this out; he must 
ask his Father, he must spend forty days 
in the desert ; and though he did not yet 
know what would be the outcome of this 
struggle, he well knew one thing, — that 
he should not issue from it the Messiah 
whom John persisted in preaching. 

No longer feeling himself in accord with 
John, his first care was to baptize no 
longer. Nevertheless he permitted his dis- 
ciples to baptize, 1 — a slight indication 
which well reveals the hesitations of his 
soul. 

But he must put an end to these hesita- 
tions ; he must examine John's ideas con- 
cerning the Messiah, and he must ask 
himself seriously what sort of Messiah he 
himself ought to be. He must enter upon 
a conflict and achieve a victory which 
the Baptist could neither enter upon nor 
achieve. 

It is of the agonizing and terrible con- 
flict which preceded the victory that we 
have now to speak. Jesus, having given 
up baptizing, and knowing that he was the 
Messiah, felt that the question of questions 
was being put to him with ever-growing 

1 John iv. 1, 2. 



BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 131 

urgency, "What kind of Messiah shall I 
be? " And so he retired to the desert, and 
the temptation began. 

The day would come when Jesus would 
pronounce the final opinion concerning 
John: "Verily I say unto you, Among 
them that are born of woman there hath 
not arisen a greater than John the Baptist : 
nevertheless, he that is but little in the 
kingdom of heaven is greater than he." 1 
That is to say: I admire him still; I sub- 
tract nothing from my early admiration of 
him ; I deny nothing of our long associa- 
tion and our close intimacy. John is 
Elias; he is my forerunner. Among the 
sons of the men of the past there has not 
been born one greater than he. He is more 
than a prophet. But he would not see 
in me the Messiah whom he himself an- 
nounced. He is lower than the least of 
my disciples. He is not of the kingdom 
of God, for he has found in me an occa- 
sion for scandal. 

Jesus then parted from John, but he 

never forgot him. The vision of the desert 

where he had gone to see and hear this 

man was never effaced from his memory. 

i Matt. xi. 11. 



132 JESUS CHRIST 

A few days before his death he was still 
speaking to the Pharisees of John's bap- 
tism, and his preaching made such an 
impression upon him that to the very close 
of his life bits of phrases and some of the 
favorite expressions of the Baptist appeared 
here and there in his own discourses. 1 

He was therefore always grateful to 
him; but while he felt the greatness of 
John the Baptist, he also felt most vividly 
all in which he was wanting. 

John the Baptist belonged entirely to a 
past which must inevitably disappear. He 
had preached only a moral reformation, 
based upon the ancient theocracy of Israel, 
and he always clung too closely to ritual. 
Jesus, on his part, had discerned the eter- 
nal element in the Baptist's preaching 
and work, and when he applied to him his 
ordinary method he perceived that John 
was sewing new cloth upon old garments, 
putting new wine into old and worn-out 
wine-skins, which were ready to burst. 2 

1 Matt. xii. 34 ; xxiii. 33 ; etc. 

2 Some persons will no doubt think that there is 
more than this to say about the Baptist ; they will cite 
to me, for example, that utterance of his, reported in 
the fourth Gospel, "Behold the Lamb of God, which 
taketh away the sins of the world." I reply to these 



BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 133 

John the Baptist, on his side, kept his 
disciples, and they remained independent 
of the Christian movement. 1 

persons in advance that my intention has not been to 
write a complete monograph on the Forerunner, and 
that I had no occasion to say what John the Baptist 
may have thought of Jesus at one or another moment 
of his life. I had simply to ask what Jesus thought of 
John the Baptist. 

1 Matt. ix. 14 ; Mark ii. 18 ; Luke v. 33, xi. 1 ; John 
iii. 25 ; Matt. xiv. 12 ; Acts xviii. 24 ff ., xix. 2 ff . 



IX 



THE MESSIANIC IDEAL OF JESUS 
AT THIRTY YEARS OF AGE 



CHAPTEE IX 

THE MESSIANIC IDEAL OF JESUS AT THIRTY 
YEARS OF AGE 

IMMEDIATELY after the revelation of 
the baptism the temptation began. 
He was the Messiah! But others had 
believed themselves to be the Messiah and 
had been mistaken! The great "Hope of 
Israel " had thrown many of his contem- 
poraries into frenzy. Was he to be one of 
these ? Was he in his turn to be the sub- 
ject of a tremendous illusion? And if he 
was not mad, was he not to become so ? 

The minds of his compatriots were 
becoming excited, their imaginations in- 
flamed; the great word " Messiah " had led 
astray more than one ill-balanced mind. 
Some had dared to appropriate it to them- 
selves, and they had ended in insanity. 
And now he in his turn had received the 
dreadful heritage. He was to follow in 



138 JESUS CHRIST 

the same way ! The temptation, the danger, 
were supreme. 

He would avoid the danger, and triumph 
over the temptation. But for this he must 
undergo a great conflict. It was to be 
an inward battle, from which he was to 
come off conqueror. The Gospel stories 1 
have brought down to us its sublime and 
magnificent echo. 

For indeed the temptation was not an 
isolated and momentary experience. It 
extended over all that part of Jesus' life 
which immediately followed his baptism. 
The Evangelists assign to it a duration 
of forty days. The number is symbolical, 
like the whole narrative. During forty 
days, and no doubt a much longer time, 
Jesus had been asking himself what kind 
of Messiah he should be. The picturesque 
narrative of the Evangelists admirably de- 
scribes the conflict through which his soul 
was passing, and the struggles which he 
underwent. 

For some time past he had been gradually 
assuming an attitude of growing reserve 
with respect of the "Hope of Israel." 
Before his baptism, during the years of 

i Matt. iv. 1 ff. : Luke iv. 1 ff. 



BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 130 

solitude spent at Nazareth, the thought 
had presented itself to him: What if I 
were the Messiah! It had pursued him; 
he had sought to avoid it, and he had 
waited with a prudence that cannot be too 
much admired, — waited because he dis- 
trusted himself. Now he knew he was the 
Messiah, and he could no longer escape 
the struggle. It came. It was terrible; 
it was a gigantic battle, out of which he 
came forth conqueror. His conscience was 
its battlefield; his triumph in it such that 
the temptation never again assailed him. 

Over what did he triumph ? Over false 
ideas, over the erroneous notions of his 
contemporaries, over all that he had be- 
lieved and expected in common with his 
entire people. 

At this point we must be precise, and 
state what was the " Messianic Idea " which 
the Jewish Apocalypses had taught him as 
the truth itself, — ■ what was this wild hope, 
this dazzling dream, whose vision had been 
haunting his nation for so many years. 
Next we must ask what he did with it 
during those days of conflict in the desert ; 
and we shall see that, faithful to his con- 
stant method, he had rejected one part of 



140 JESUS CHRIST 

it and preserved another. Here again he 
abolished nothing, he fulfilled everything. 

What, then, had he up to this time 
believed, in common with all his fellow- 
countrymen, and what was taking place in 
his soul at the precise moment when he had 
just learned that he was the Messiah ? 

He had believed that the Jews were a 
privileged people, whose privilege it was 
to have God himself for king. 1 Every 
day he recited these words of the Shemone 
Esre: "Be King over us, Thou alone, O 
Lord!" 2 Like all the pious men of his 
time, he had certainly often said that God 
was the only King of Israel. 3 The Jewish 
people were therefore the kingdom of God ; 
but they had fallen into the power of the 
Gentiles, "sinners," "the wicked," and 
the kingdom of God was not what it was 
intended to be. When the Romans were 
driven out, the true kingdom of God would 
be established. 

It was an ideal for the future. God, the 
King, had for a time given over his rights 
to the Gentiles, but the time was at hand 

1 Psalter of Solomon, xvii. 1, 61. 

2 Eleventh Benediction. 

8 See Josephus, Ant. xviii. 1, 6, and Wars, ii. 8, 1. 



BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 141 

when this state of things would cease. 
Daniel had affirmed it in his prophecies; 
therefore his book was pondered more than 
any other, and we have already said that 
during long years it had certainly been the 
object of Jesus' constant study. The 
future kingdom would be universal, 1 
Daniel had said; and Jesus believed what 
this book taught. Again, Daniel said that 
the Gentile kingdoms should disappear, 
and the sovereignty should be exercised 
by pious and believing Jews, who would 
have at their head a mysterious personage 
come down from the skies, to be the head 
of the new Israel, ruler of the world. All 
peoples of the earth would be subject to 
the Jews. 2 This idea of Daniel had so 
thoroughly penetrated the minds of the 
Jews of the first century that, as we have 
shown, all the Apocryphas and Pseud- 
epigraphs which Jesus read, 3 in all proba- 
bility clearly taught it. 4 

1 Dan. vii. 14. 2 Dan. vii. 13-28. 

8 At least those which were composed before his 
day ; but the date of some of them is still undeter- 
mined, and these may be posterior to Christ. In every 
case (and this is the essential thing) they express 
ideas which were popular in the time of Jesus. 

4 1 Mace. ii. 57, iv. 46, xiv. 41 ; 2 Mace. vii. 9, xiii. 



142 JESUS CHRIST 

The advent of this kingdom would in- 
augurate the coming age, and would man- 
ifest itself by a Judgment which would 
precede its establishment. John the Bap- 
tist had come, and had preached this with 
the ardor and conviction of a Seer. He 
was not mistaken. For he had said, 
First the Judgment; and this Judgment 
was imminent. 1 It would be marked 
by the defeat of the Gentiles and the 
supremacy of the Jews. Not only did 
Jesus believe that John the Baptist was 
not mistaken; he was persuaded that he 
was the Elias who was to have come, and 
that he himself, Jesus, was the Messiah. 
He thought, then, that the history of his 
people and of the world was just at the 
moment when the travail pangs of the 
Messianic epoch were to begin, since Elias 
was already there, and the Messiah was 
already born. He must, in fact, be born 
before the Messianic Judgment, and not 
after it. 2 

4 ; Judith ix. 12 ; Eccl. v. 26, xlvii. 13 ; Baruch iv. 23, 
v. 2-4, xxv. 49 ; Wisdom iii. 8, v. 16 ; the oldest frag- 
ment of the Book of Enoch xc. 29-42, xci. 12, 17; 
Similitudes xxxix. 1-8, 5-51. 

1 Matt. iii. 10-12 ; Luke iii. 7-9 ; see also Luke xix. 11. 

2 Syb. Orac. iii. 652-656 ; Psal. Sol. xvii. 24, 26, 27, 
31, 38, 39, 41, etc. 



BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 143 

Now, what was about to take place ? A 
last assault of the Gentiles against the Mes- 
siah. But they would not be victorious; 
that was impossible. On the contrary, 
they would be all but blotted out by a 
terrible Judgment; the survivors would 
be converted and the dispersed Jews 
brought back again. Thus were all the 
acts of the great drama fixed in a rigorous 
order. 

When all the scenes which have just 
been described should have been carried 
out, then, and then alone, would the king- 
dom of God be founded. Its seat would 
be Palestine, and from there it would 
extend itself over the whole world. The 
earth would be entirely subject to the 
children of Israel. An era of supreme 
felicity would begin: the ground would 
be of surprising fertility; men would be 
rich and happy, and would live a thousand 
years ; women would bring forth children 
without pain; the harvesters would no 
longer suffer weariness; there would be 
no injustice committed among the elect 
people ; all men would be holy, and their 
life a perpetual worship. It would be the 
Palingenesis, the Renewal of all things. 



144 JESUS CHRIST 

As to the exact epoch when the Palin- 
genesis was to begin, all were not in accord. 
Some made it coincide, as we have just 
said, with the Messianic Kingdom; others 
placed it later, in what they called Aolam- 
aba, the age to come. Traces of this 
divergence are to be found in the Xew 
Testament. Sometimes it is said that the 
Kingdom shall be founded in the present 
age, in the actual world : 1 at others it is 
placed in the age to come. 2 In any case, 
one of the characteristics of the Palin- 
genesis would be the Resurrection of the 
dead, accompanied by a final, universal 
judgment, the result of which would be, 
for some, condemnation and torment in 
Gehenna: for others, life eternal and re- 
wards in the kingdom of God. 

This teaching Jesus had received ; he was 
now called to judge of it. It was necessary 
that he should divide between the true 
and the false, and take, as Messiah, a 
definitive attitude with respect to these 
Messianic beliefs which every one accepted 
as indisputable verities. 

He also would proclaim the kingdom of 

1 Luke xix. 11 ; xxiv. 21. 

2 Matt. xxiv. 3 ; Mark xiii. 4. 



BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 145 

of God, and he would call it the kingdom of 
heaven (Malekat hash-shamayim). In this 
he would simply imitate his contemporaries, 
with whom the two expressions were abso- 
lutely synonymous, and who used the 
second simply to avoid pronouncing the 
sacred name of Jehovah, or even the names 
Elohim and Adonai. 1 Jesus would do the 
same. He would also consider the king- 
dom as to come. He would say, "The 
kingdom of heaven is at hand." In the 
Sermon on the Mount, from which we must 
date the precepts of the first part of his 
ministry, all the rewards promised to those 
who are worthy of the kingdom are reserved 
for them in the future. "You shall be 
filled; you shall laugh ; they shall see 
God," etc. He would teach his disciples 
to say " Thy kingdom come." 3 The king- 
dom of heaven was therefore not yet come. 

1 We say the same in French , — " Heaven keep me 
from it ! " " Would to Heaven that," for " God keep 
me from it ! " " Would to God that " ; and the word 
" heaven " in the expression " kingdom of heaven " 
never signified the abode of the blessed after this life. 
Let us add that this expression, " kingdom of heaven," 
was very happily chosen, since "the Father is in 
heaven," and his kingdom to come must come down 
to be established on earth by the Messiah. 

a Matt. v. 4 ff. ; Luke vi. 21 ft 

3 Matt. vi. 10; Luke xi. 2. 
10 



146 JESUS CHRIST 

We have not here to ask if at a later 
day, in the midst of his ministry, Jesus did 
not announce the kingdom as present. 1 
At the time which we are considering, the 
time of the Temptation, all the evidence 
shows that in the mind of Jesus the king- 
dom was still to come. Nothing indicates 
that he did not connect this kingdom to 
come with a second coming of his own, a 
glorious coming, by which he should es- 
tablish the kingdom of God on the earth. 

Up to this time Jesus had, at least to all 
appearance, rejected nothing of what his 
contemporaries taught. What, then, was 
the temptation? What was the victory 
achieved by him in the terrible conflict in 
which he triumphed ? 

The Gospels expressly distinguish three 
conflicts and three victories. In the first 
Satan counselled Jesus to make stones into 
bread; that is to say, to live for himself, 
make things subservient to him, seek his 
own gloiy. The temptation was formi- 
dable because it accords with what the 
Jewish Messiah was expected to be; he 
was to be a Master and a King : to come to 
his throne through blood, if necessary, and, 

i Matt. xii. 28 ; Luke xi. 20. 



BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 147 

in any case, to seat himself upon a veritable 
throne. Jesus repelled such a thought, 
He declared that he would not seek to be 
served, but, on the contrary, he would 
serve. Here he had a clear notion of true 
greatness, and he, first of all, gave it to the 
world. This truth, to-day so elementary, 
that the great man is not he who is served 
but he who renders service, was first 
affirmed by Jesus in his words and in his 
life. "Whosoever would become great 
among you let him be your servant." 1 

By triumphing over this temptation 
Jesus conquered a place which he will 
always keep, and which a multitude of his 
precepts attest. He opposed to the pop- 
ular ideal another ideal, — that of renuncia- 
tion and sacrifice, that of obedience to the 
Father, whatever might be his will. 

But now comes the second temptation. 
Satan said to him, " Throw thyself from a 
pinnacle of the Temple," — that is to say, 
dazzle the world, fascinate it by your 
genius, overawe it by your power; for 
the Jewish Messiah was expected to domi- 
nate and awe. Now, Jesus had read and 
reread Apocalypses full of transparent alle- 

1 Matt. xx. 26 1, and parallel passages. 



148 JESUS CHRIST 

gories and obvious imagery whence it was 
to be drawn that the expected Liberator 
was, in fact, to use constraint and even vio- 
lence, and put his enemies beneath his feet. 
Ah ! this temptation much allured him : to 
dazzle by prodigies, to command belief by 
sensible or intellectual evidence, to be 
the undisputed master of the humble, 
for whom he feels himself full of such an 
infinite compassion, and thus to serve 
them! 

He repelled it; he would have no other 
weapon than words, no other prestige than 
persuasion, no other talisman than love. 
He would reign only over hearts. The 
kingdom of God should be spiritual, in- 
visible, purely moral. It should be wher- 
ever repentance and a new birth of the soul 
were found. There should be no sudden 
and startling appearance, as the Jews 
would have it, but the slow and blessed 
action of the mere word of the Messiah; 
for it was not exterior reforms that would 
save the world. It was first of all necessary 
that hearts should be changed ; after that 
exterior reforms would come" of themselves 
as a natural consequence. The Messiah 
would work no magical transformation. 



BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 149 

Here, for the second time, Jesus put 
himself in absolute opposition to the ideas 
of his time, and, far from permitting him- 
self to be led away by the Messianic beliefs 
of his people, he resisted them. It should 
be the meek, the gentle, who should inherit 
the earth; and at the time when he pro- 
claimed with greatest energy his kingdom 
and his Messianic dignity, he made no 
allusion, not the slightest, to the allegories 
with which the Apocalypses of his people 
were filled. 1 He did not even make use 
of allegorical language; his speech was 
always simple, unpretentious, popular. 

This was not all : he had a third victory 
to achieve. In a dazzling vision Satan 
showed him all the kingdoms of the world 
and their glory, for his people were ex- 
pecting a political power. And then 
Jesus asked himself if it ought not to be 
thus with his kingdom; for he loved his 
people, and ardently desired that they 
might be delivered from the Romans. 
Should he then mingle politics and religion ? 
Never. He would separate them. He 
absolutely repudiated all political preten- 

1 Save the evident allusions to the allegories of 
Daniel. Mark xiii. and parallel passages. 



150 JESUS CHRIST 

sions. He would not have a terrestrial 
kingdom ; to think of it was a suggestion 
of Satan. He would accept one sole king- 
dom, — the divine kingdom of the love 
which would go whithersoever his Father 
might judge good. Might it be even to 
martyrdom? He knew not. Did he see 
a cross uprising at the end of the pathway 
of life ? Not yet. But if such should be 
the will of the Father, he was ready; and 
when the day should come he should per- 
ceive the accursed tree, he would more 
than ever insist that he was the Messiah. 
At the present hour he as yet knew noth- 
ing of this; on the contrary, he firmly 
hoped to deliver his people by some other 
means. 

Jesus, then, was about to offer himself 
as the Messiah promised by the prophets. 
The latter had announced that a divine 
messenger would come to establish the 
reign of Jehovah at Jerusalem and upon 
the earth. He was this divine messenger; 
he was the Son of the Father who is in 
heaven, and he would realize his kingdom 
by asking for faith in himself. If the 
Jews rejected him, if they wrought his de- 
struction, he would carry, even to the cross, 



BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 151 

his unshaken trust in his Father and in 
his work. Even in the face of death he 
would still be convinced that he should 
one day return in the clouds to judge 
the living and the dead. His work 
would be the sublime coronation of proph- 
ecy; he would realize the national hopes, 
he would be the hero of those Jewish 
Apocalypses whose reading had nourished 
his youth. 

It was thus without enthusiasm or ex- 
citement, but after long deliberation, with 
ripe reflection, that he took upon himself 
to carry out the Messianic work, for he 
had transformed it. 

The temptation was ended, and he had 
decided to undertake the conversion of his 
people. But though he was ready even 
for death itself, in thus undertaking it he 
knew not that his mission would one day 
require this of him. He was simply the 
spiritual and moral Messiah; he was not 
yet the suffering and crucified Messiah. He 
would serve ; his kingdom should be estab- 
lished in men's hearts ; he would accomplish 
only a religious work. On these three points 
he had achieved a victory. He came forth 
unscathed from this triple conflict; and 



152 JESUS CHfilST 

his triumph put him in possession of a new 
grandeur, a sublime strength, which noth- 
ing could abate. The Jewish Messianic 
idea vanished, swallowed up in his three- 
fold victory. 

Yet let us not misconstrue Jesus' true 
thought. If his kingdom was purely spir- 
itual, if he separated politics from religion, 
it was not that Jesus had not a profound 
sympathy with the national hope of his 
people. He cherished the hope that the 
nation would understand that the kingdom 
was solely religious, and yet that it could 
be at the same time the national kingdom 
predicted by the prophets, and which they 
all expected. He hoped to found in the 
heart of his nation, by pacific means, by 
persuasion and love, a kingdom whose 
head — himself — would be acclaimed by 
the Pharisees. No doubt he had no 
notion how the Romans could be done 
away with without the employment of 
force; perhaps, like his contemporaries, 
he counted upon a miraculous intervention 
of the Heavenly Father. But it is evident 
that he chose twelve apostles because he 
looked forward to the national restoration 
of the twelve tribes, and in consequence 



BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 153 

the foundation of a kingdom on earth, — in 
this sense a visible kingdom. He afterward 
said to Peter, " now in this time ; " : promis- 
ing him a brilliant and public reward in 
the present time as well as in the age to 
come. 

I will go farther, and say that this hope 
did not leave him even when his death was 
certain. He did not oppose the request of 
the sons of Zebedee, 2 nor did he deny that 
he should one day be enthroned in glory, 
with his apostles beside him. His martyr- 
dom was no doubt to precede this glorifica- 
tion ; but there would be seats on his right 
hand and on his left, and his Father would 
bestow them. When in Gethsemane he 
said, "Father, if it be possible, let this 
cup pass from me," 3 this prayer had no 
meaning if it did not signify that he hoped 
against all hope that his kingdom would be 
founded without the cross: incomparably 
more must he have hoped this in the 
days of his temptation, saying to himself, 
My people may recognize and welcome me. 
And he said this to himself until the end, 

1 Luke xviii. 30 ; Matt. xix. 27-29. 

2 Matt. xx. 20 ff., and parallel passages. 

3 Matt. xxvi. 39, and parallel passages. 



154 JESUS CHRIST 

always believing in a possible change of 
feeling. 

Jesus, then, always thought that he might. 
be recognized as the national Messiah and 
religious Liberator. To the last day he 
tried hard to gain the Jews, and cherished 
the deathless hope that his people would 
escape the catastrophe of the year 70 by 
submitting themselves to him. 

Therefore he gave himself entirely to 
this work, in which he displayed an inde- 
fatigable activity. He was not yet saying, 
"The Son of man has come to give his 
life," for he believed that he had come to 
found his kingdom in his lifetime, to found 
it by his merciful and holy activity. But 
he did say, " The time is fulfilled." 1 The 
kingdom was imminent ; it was even already 
present in the person of its head. 

From the beginning he himself had the 
first place in the kingdom, for he was 
"he who should come;" but he did not 
yet preach himself ; he preached only " the 
Gospel of the kingdom," and in no partic- 
ular broke with the Pharisees. The rup- 
ture with them — that is, with Judaism, for 
we must remember that the Pharisees 

i Mark i. 15. 



BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 155 

were the true Judaism — was not to come 
until later. For the moment he magnified 
Judaism, he fulfilled it by remaining in 
the great current of the best Pharisaic 
ideas ; that is, by preaching a large spirit- 
ualization of the kingdom of God, as is 
shown by the Beatitudes of the Sermon on 
the Mount, 1 by the sermon at Nazareth in 
which he cites Isaiah, 2 by the parable of 
the Sower, 3 by his reply to the emissaries 
of John the Baptist, 4 in a word, by the en- 
tire first part of his ministry. But if he 
did not as yet preach his own person, he 
was none the less convinced, from the time 
of his baptism, that he bore in his person 
the realization of the "Hope of Israel." 

Since he was the Messiah, he must one 
day return to judge the world ; and during 
his entire public life he affirmed the Judg- 
ment to come with the same vigor, the 
same unalterable conviction. He closed 
the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount, 
in the first part of his ministry, by declar- 
ing that in the last day he would say to 
those who had not done the will of the 
Father, "Depart from me, I never knew 

1 Matt. v. 3 ft. 2 Luke iv. 16 ff. 

8 Matt. xiii. 4 ft. 4 Matt. xi. 2 ff. 



156 JESUS CHRIST 

you;" 1 and in one of his last parables, 
when he was about to die, when his cross 
and its ignominy were distinctly before 
him, he declared, with the same certitude, 
that he should one day preside at the 
solemn assizes in which all humanity would 
be judged. 2 Returning in his glory in 
the clouds of heaven, he would sit upon a 
throne, and put some on his right hand, 
others on his left. It is impossible to 
minimize the immense force of this testi- 
mony which Jesus gave to himself. 

He insisted upon his Messianic authority 
all his life. His confidence in himself, the 
conviction with which he spoke of him- 
self and asserted himself, never weakened. 
Quite the contrary, he was never more 
positive than in the hour when the cross 
confronted him, — that is to say, the hour 
when overwhelming defeat appeared to 
himself to be inevitable. 

Later, men would explain this : councils 
would bring new elements to the doctrine 
of Jesus concerning himself. It is for 
theologians to ask whether these new ele- 
ments which the Church has contributed are 
simply a logical, inevitable, necessary de- 

1 Matt. vii. 23. * Matt. xxv. 31 ff. 



BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 157 

duction from what Jesus has said of his per- 
son, or whether, on the contrary, they are 
only a deplorable deviation from it. There 
was to grow up a doctrine of the Trinity, 
of three Gods who are each God and yet 
constitute only one God. This defiance 
to good sense was to be still more accen- 
tuated. It would come to be taught that 
one substance could be transformed into 
another without losing the properties which 
reveal it to our senses ; finally, a Christian 
Pantheon would come to be created, and a 
secondary order of worship, in which saints, 
angels, virgins, and martyrs would take in 
popular devotion the place of God himself, 
and of his Son. 



THE ORIGINALITY OF JESUS 



CHAPTER X 

THE ORIGINALITY OF JESUS 

T li 7E have endeavored to show in Jesus, 
as a man of his time, a Jew grow- 
ing up in the midst of the religious be- 
liefs of his contemporaries, studying them, 
assimilating or rejecting them, alwaj^s 
independent of them, and yet obliged to 
reckon with them. But not one of the 
great personalities of history may be en- 
tirely explained in this way, and Jesus 
less than any other. If he was not an 
exception to the general law which ordains 
that every man shall be determined by his 
race, his environment, and the age in which 
he is born, no more was he an exception 
to that other mysterious and hidden law, 
according to which there is in every great 
individuality a deep, hidden force which 
remains beyond the pale of all appreciation. 
If a Shakespeare, a Luther, a Napoleon 
have their own originality, and are not to 
be entirely explained by heredity, environ- 
11 



162 JESUS CHRIST 

ment, and the time in which they lived, 
much less is Jesus. 

In what consists the originality of Jesus ? 
What is its very essence ? To this ques- 
tion we think the impartial historian must 
unhesitatingly answer: The very clear 
and full consciousness of a union with 
God, which nothing in the past had ever 
troubled, and which nothing troubled in 
the present. The Old Testament taught 
him about God; nature disclosed him to 
him, and he saw him in the Old Testament 
as in nature. But this exterior vision was 
as nothing compared with the permanent 
inward vision which illuminated his soul. 
Between God and him there was a constant 
and mysterious interchange ; God was his 
Father, he was his Son, and this com- 
munion was alive, and was never dis- 
turbed. At a later day theologians might 
speak of two natures. Let us leave the 
theologians to themselves. The reality of 
history speaks to us in nobler language 
than theirs; and if we remain upon the 
territory of facts, we see in Jesus the 
supreme revelation of God upon earth. 
The longings of ancient humanity were 
realized in him; its religious pilgrimage 



BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 163 

was ended; it had tried all the religions 
of Paganism, and now he had appeared in 
whom it could rest. There is nothing 
beyond the religious consciousness of Jesus, 
and man can conceive of nothing. 

Without doubt there have been vision- 
aries, mystics, illuminati, who also have 
possessed God, lived in him, lost them- 
selves in him; but their own personalit}^ 
disappeared, while with Jesus the con- 
sciousness of God was never apart from 
his consciousness of himself. The more 
he felt God in and with him, the more 
evident became his own personality, the 
stronger his assurance that he was himself 
man, such as man should be, the true man, 
the Son of God. The more he possessed 
God the more he possessed himself; and it 
was because the consciousness which he 
had of his own value was never separated 
from his consciousness of God that he 
could say, "Come unto me," "Believe in 
me." It was thus that he attained to faith 
in his divine mission, and to the conviction 
that he was in the world for its salvation. 
His faith in his Messianic vocation and 
his faith in his own perfect holiness were 
nothing else than a consciousness of his 



164 JESUS CHRIST 

union with God, or faith in his own 
Divinity. 

Let us try to be exact. If Jesus had 
these convictions, there are only two 
possible suppositions, — those which we 
pointed out in our Introduction. Accord- 
ing to the first, he was the victim of a 
strange and prodigious delusion when he 
believed himself to be in constant relations 
with God, in delusion when he had faith 
in himself, in delusion when he permitted 
himself to be acclaimed as Messiah ; and he 
died the victim of this mad mistake. It 
is thus, we have said, that Renan under- 
stood Jesus. His exquisite charm, hav- 
ing first seduced the multitudes, ended by 
seducing himself, and, intoxicated with 
success, he ended at last in madness. 

The other alternative alone seems to us 
possible; and that in the name of facts 
impartially observed, for we would here 
give simply a historical verification. We 
believe that it was the inward development 
of his moral consciousness which led Jesus 
to declare himself the Saviour of the world. 
His vocation did not come to him from 
without; it was not events which made 
Jesus the Son of God. for the events can 



BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 165 

only be explained by the consciousness 
which Jesus had of being the Son of God. 

Not long ago we wrote the words " per- 
fect holiness of Jesus." It is impossible to 
prove directly his perfect holiness, for 
documents are wanting, and the life of 
Jesus is too little known. But it can be 
proved that he always had a consciousness 
of integrity, and that he was never known 
to repent. It is therefore permitted to 
affirm that there was nothing culpable in 
his life, for this may be legitimately inferred 
from these two facts. This is why we 
defined as holiness his perfect union with 
God, his constant and unalterable feeling of 
the entire approval of Him whom he called 
the Father ; in a word, the consciousness of 
a cloudless integrity. The peace of his soul 
was never disturbed; he regretted noth- 
ing, was ashamed of nothing, was guilty of 
nothing. 

But he knew our temptations ; he must 
have conquered them, and his victories were 
not achieved without suffering. Jesus had 
a very vivid and profound feeling with 
regard to sin. The story of the tempta- 
tion in the desert shows him to us as 
struggling against evil just such as it pre- 



166 JESUS CHRIST 

sents itself to us. He had been haunted 
by the dream of an easy success ; he had 
known what was the intoxication of pride, 
he had divined the allurements of the 
flesh. But he had never yielded for so 
much as an instant; his efforts had always 
been victorious, and he had never weakened 
in his incessant conflict. Therefore we 
never find in him the slightest feeling of 
moral powerlessness. And yet it is the 
best among the children of men who al- 
ways feel themselves the most weak : the 
most advanced in the right way who be- 
lieve themselves to have taken only the 
first steps ; those who are nearest to reach- 
ing the goal who fear they may never 
attain it. Such was the experience of men 
like St. Paul, Pascal, St. Cyran, Adoiphe 
Monod. The ideal appeared to them ever 
higher and more distant, their will without 
strength, and their conflict without success. 
With Jesus there was nothing of the 
kind. He was sure of himself, sure of 
God, sure of his own holiness. His soul 
bore no scars, for it had never received 
a wound, never suffered a moral defeat. 
Strange fact, which manifests itself with 
an incontestable historic verity, he knew 



BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 167 

not what it was to feel himself pardoned 
and restored. He had never trembled in 
humiliation at the secret and overwhelm- 
ing memory of a moral fall. There had 
never been an interval between his will 
and his duty, and the plaints of great 
saints had never rent his soul. The good 
which he willed, that he did ; the law that 
he gave to himself, that he fulfilled; the 
ideal which presented itself to him he 
realized; and yet his ideal of holiness, of 
uprightness and love, his ideal of moral 
perfection, is the highest that ever was. 

Is it possible to define the character of 
Jesus ? We cannot arrive at such a defini- 
tion by showing that all good qualities are 
to be found united in him. If we could 
show this, we should only have made more 
impossible the description of his character. 
For if he had good qualities of the most 
opposite kinds, and, in consequence, all 
characters, then he had none at all, — which 
is impossible. A person without charac- 
ter would be an abstraction with neither 
interest nor life. Nothing is so tedious as 
the story of so-called perfect persons, in 
works of the imagination. But Jesus is 



168 JESUS CHRIST 

the most interesting, the most captivating 
personality in history. We always come 
back to him ; the enigma of his person and 
life is always before ns. He therefore had 
a character, an individuality of clearest, 
most well-defined outlines. 

Nevertheless, it seems to us that though 
a complete definition of the character of 
Jesus is impossible, there are yet two 
characteristics which dominate all others. 

The first is this: The faculties of his 
soul were always alert. His reason was 
always firm and enlightened; his heart 
always open to all sympathies, his will 
always of a heroic energy. The exterior 
world was never closed to him ; he always 
had his eyes open to all that surrounded 
him, and at every moment he gave himself 
without reserve. This is the first feature 
which strikes us in the character of Jesus. 

The second is self-collectedness. He 
loved retirement and solitude because there 
he found the Father, who "is in secret;" 
and we have said that he was the first to 
put in practice his precept, "When thou 
prayest, shut thy door." 1 In consequence, 
we find in him neither the thoughtless 

1 Matt. yi. 6. 



BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 169 

enthusiasm which anticipates the hour of 
duty, nor the cowardice which lets pass 
the moment for doing it. He was always 
ready; but he awaited the decisive hour, 
that which he called " the hour appointed 
by the Father." There was therefore in 
him inward harmony, deep coherence, and, 
at the same time, dramatic progress. 

During his ministry he was never guided 
by external fatalism ; everything was with 
him the product of a free decision. Noth- 
ing ever broke down that decision, noth- 
ing ever made it flinch. His life was the 
greatest drama of history, and, at the same 
time, the most perfect, — a moral drama, 
whose sole factor, personal and always 
active, was his heroic will. 

These seem to us to have been the two 
dominant features of Jesus' character. 
They were complementary to each other, 
and constituted his personality. We have 
already made them manifest when defining 
his holiness. Jesus shows us, on one side, 
man such as he ought to be, whose moral 
stature is complete, the man who is a true 
Son of God ; and on the other side a deep 
and never-troubled union with God, com- 
plete harmony between the Father and the 
Son. 



170 JESUS CHRIST 

We have endeavored in the preceding 
pages to separate the fignre of Jesus from 
the theological and dogmatic notions which 
were formulated by the Church at a later 
day. The task was difficult, perhaps im- 
possible; in any case, we cannot pursue 
it farther. Jesus, during his ministry, 
declared that he was the object of the 
Christian religion, — that the faith, the love, 
and the worship of believers ought to be 
concentrated upon him. Later the Church 
would say: Jesus said that we must be- 
lieve on him because he was this or that. 
We leave on one side these becauses, and, 
faithful to the method which we imposed 
upon ourselves, we confine ourselves to 
setting forth the facts, — the historic facts 
which alone are beyond all dispute. Now, 
if any fact is certain, it is that Jesus de- 
clared that he would reconcile earth with 
heaven ; that he would restore the sinner, 
console the afflicted, give eternal life. 
Here is his originality, and it is undeni- 
able; here is also his power. Men may 
show us, if they will, that all Christian 
morals were already to be found in Hel- 
lenic morality ; it is none the less certain 
that Greek philosophy remained sterile, 



BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 171 

and that Christianity has 'transformed the 
world. 

Without doubt, Jesus Christ was born 
at a propitious day and hour. We have 
said that Luther, born a hundred years 
earlier, would not have been Luther; any 
precursor of the Reformation who died 
obscure might, perhaps, have been as great 
as he, if he had been born in the same time 
as he. It matters not, for the personality 
of Jesus towers far above all that he can 
have owed to his time and his environ- 
ment. Here is one proof among a thou- 
sand, and it also is from facts. The notion 
of sin is closely connected with the ap- 
pearance of Jesus. Christ carried war into 
the hearts of men by awakening there a 
purely moral sense, — the sense of sin ; and 
to awaken it he laid no stress upon the 
duality of mind and matter. The most 
characteristic feature of Christian doctrine, 
the most profound cause of its action in 
the world, comes from its notion of holi- 
ness. A thirst for purity and perfection 
appeared upon the earth with Jesus. No 
doubt he did not create it. The notion of 
holiness is a Hebraic notion; nevertheless, 
it is only from the time of Jesus Christ that 



172 JESUS CHRIST 

men have carried on an interior struggle, 
have gone down into themselves and dis- 
covered in their souls hidden treasures and 
unknown springs, — ■ an immense fact, inex- 
plicable by the mere preaching of holiness 
upon the lips of the Christ, and to be ex- 
plained only by the moral perfection of the 
person of Jesus. If men like St. Paul, 
St. Augustine, Luther, Pascal, have not 
chosen for themselves the defilements and 
degradations of the world; if they hun- 
gered for the ideal, were athirst for holi- 
ness ; if they smote upon their breasts and 
implored the pardon of God with tears, — 
it was because Jesus had shown them what 
is the perfection which God requires. If, 
finally, Jesus brought about the most for- 
midable crisis in human history, it is be- 
cause he was perfectly holy. The Jewish 
conscience has become the conscience of 
humanity itself. All its promises, all its 
hopes, all its aspirations were realized in 
Jesus. He was the normal man, man such 
as he was intended to be. There was no 
weakness in his life, and none will ever be 
discovered there. The tradition of sin was 
vanquished, and it is he who conquered it. 



CONCLUSION 



CONCLUSION 

JESUS is ready, and about to begin his 
ministry. He is about thirty years 
old; 1 he is definitively leaving Nazareth, 
deciding to establish himself in Caper- 
naum, a large city on the border of the 
Lake of Tiberias. He will dwell in a 
house which will become his own. From 
it he will travel about in Galilee, and will 
gather around him numerous disciples. 
His first preaching will be the pure and 
simple repetition of the call of John the 
Baptist : " Repent, for the kingdom of God 
is at hand." 2 

Let us try to picture him to ourselves as 
he was then. His dress is composed of 
two garments, the tunic and the mantle. 
His tunic is of linen, fitted to the body, 
with sleeves, and reaching to the feet; his 

i Luke iii. 23. 2 Matt, hi. 2. 



176 JESUS C HEIST 

mantle is white, striped with brown or 
dark blue; 1 it is wide and floating when 
he walks, but he often binds it close to 
his waist with a girdle. His feet are shod 
with leather sandals, fastened with thongs, 
and made of the skin of the camel or 
hyena. He has a staff in his hand, and 
on his head a turban, without which he is 
never seen. He removes it only at night, 
and puts it on every morning; he wears it 
in the house and in the synagogues; he 
prays with covered head. Fastened under 
the chin by a cord, it falls down on either 
side over his shoulders and his tunic. 

With regard to the exterior aspect of 
Jesus, his face, we have no information. 
We should be glad if the traditional pic- 
ture were historic; it would be difficult 
to picture Jesus to ourselves under any 
other form. Nevertheless, this traditional 
type is purely conventional. The writ- 
ings of those who knew Jesus, the writings 
of the apostles, never give any informa- 
tion as to his exterior aspect. The most 
ancient Fathers who speak of him — Jus- 

1 These were the usual colors ; but it is possible 
that Jesus had adopted the white garment of the 
Essenes. 



• 



BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 177 

tin Martyr, Tertullian, Origen — all af- 
firm that he was small of stature and 
plain of face. Let us hasten to add that 
this assertion rests on nothing historical, 
but is an a priori conclusion, drawn from 
Isaiah's description of the servant of Je- 
hovah : 1 " There is no beauty in him that we 
should desire him," "He has no form nor 
comeliness," etc. These passages, it was 
said, are prophetic: they must therefore 
tell us exactly how Jesus looked. 

The Gnostic heretics of the second cen- 
tury, whose witness is as ancient as that 
of the Fathers whom we have just named, 
sketched the face of Jesus, and asserted 
that in these pictures they reproduced a 
portrait made by Pilate himself. Accord- 
ing to them, Pilate was so much struck 
with the face of Jesus at the time of his 
judgment, that even while proceeding with 
his interrogatory he at once sketched his 
picture. This entirely fabulous assertion 
is reported by Irenaeus and Hippolytus. 
One of the pictures representing the pre- 
tended sketch by Pilate was placed by 
Alexander Severus in his Oratory, beside 
the portraits of Abraham and Apollo. 

1 Isa. lii., liii. 
12 



178 JESUS CHRIST 

Eusebius, in the fourth century, says 
that there are in Palestine several portraits 
of Jesus Christ, and even his statue; but 
we do not know under what form he was 
there portrayed. However, at this epoch 
they began to represent Jesus as the per- 
fect type of physical beauty. This asser- 
tion rests no more than the other upon 
historic data, but, like that, takes its 
origin from a passage in the Old Testa- 
ment. According to this passage, there 
applied to Jesus Christ, he must have been 
"the fairest among the sons of men." 1 

About this time we find legends appear- 
ing. According to them, Luke was a 
painter, and made a portrait of Jesus. 
King Abgar of Edessa possessed this por- 
trait, which Jesus himself had sent him. 
The veil of St. Veronica had also pre- 
served the imprint of the face of Christ. 
Finally, an ecclesiastical writer of the 
eighth century undertook to describe Jesus 
Christ, but without other guide than his 
imagination. 

In the twelfth century was fabricated a 
so-called letter of Lentulus to the Roman 
senate, describing the exterior aspect of 

1 Psalm xlv. 3. 



BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 179 

Christ; and in the fourteenth century 
Mcephorus Calixtus also made a descrip- 
tion of Jesus. Finally, was invented the 
letter which Pilate wrote to Herod when 
sending Jesus Christ to him. 

From that time the type of Christ was 
fixed, — a young man with abundant curl- 
ing hair and undivided beard, resembling a 
young god, full of grace and strength. 
Some features of this portrait, relatively 
recent, and invented out of whole cloth, 
may be authentic. The Jews wore the 
beard undivided and the hair long; it is 
therefore exact to say that it was thus with 
Jesus. But we know nothing more than 
this; and the simple fact that Judas was 
obliged to kiss him in order to point him 
out shows that when he was with the 
twelve apostles nothing distinguished him 
from any one of them, — neither his height, 
nor his garments, nor his face. The moral 
perfection of his soul certainly appeared 
in the habitual expression of his features, 
and shone in his glance ; but this fact does 
not warrant a precise conclusion as to the 
face of Jesus, since those who knew him 
not might take him for one of the twelve 
and not for the Master himself. 



180 JESUS CHRIST 

Let us return, in closing, to some of the 
questions which we put in our Introduc- 
tion; and first, let no one say any more 
about the charm of Jesus. To explain the 
enigma offered by his life by saying he 
was a charmer is notoriously insufficient. 
That there emanated from his person a 
very great charm is not to be doubted, 
provided we give this word a very ele- 
vated meaning ; but even then it seems to 
us to be very ill chosen. Doubtless no 
one dreams of characterizing as charm- 
ing his precepts which call for self-sacri- 
fice, devotion, and obedience, or of finding 
a charm in the spectacle of Jesus putting 
the first of his precepts into practice, and 
giving the example of submission and 
renunciation. It would be better worth 
while to give up the word, and when 
Christ is in question, never to use it. 

We also asked, How did Jesus come 
to announce himself, and to believe him- 
self to be the Messiah? In the preced- 
ing pages we have tried to answer this 
question in part, and in particular to 
show that there was no trace of madness 
in Jesus. On the contrary, that in him 
which is most striking, the more closely 



BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 181 

one studies him, is his possession of him- 
self, his clear-sightedness, his complete 
freedom from illusion. If he perceived 
that Jewish theology was taking the wrong 
way, that the doctrine of a Messiah who 
should seek his own glory, astonish the 
world by his miracles, and rule all the 
nations of the earth, was false, — it was 
because he never felt in the least degree 
the influence of the beliefs of his people, 
and because, far from being led away by 
the ideas of his time, he struggled against 
and conquered them. 

It appears, then, that Jesus, by himself 
alone, in the midst of a hostile world, con- 
ceived the idea of a universal salvation 
achieved by a purely spiritual work. And 
he said to himself, in advance, that though 
he were met by outbreaks of hatred, though 
he were not understood, though he suc- 
cumbed in the struggle, he should be none 
the less convinced, to the very end, that he 
had made the right choice, and should die 
with the approbation of his own conscience 
and the approval of God. 

And now let us pursue our task; and 
may God give us time and strength to go 
on with it to the very end. We have to 



182 JESUS CHRIST BEFORE HIS MINISTRY 

speak of Jesus during Ms ministry. After 
that, in a third volume, we shall describe 
his trial, his death, his resurrection. 
Henceforth we shall not need to conjec- 
ture, for there are existing sources. We 
have already borrowed from them at times. 
What is their value ? The answer to this 
question will be the object of our first 
study in the following book. 



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